Re: [Tails-dev] automated tests

> I began to think about how to filter the network traffic depending on
> being inside or outside of Tor's network. I see 3 ways to get a list of
> Tor's network ips to test against:
>
> - Simple and dumb: collect every node ip from the dir authorities
> - Run a Tor on the testing system, and parse its cached consensus file.
> - Have an access to the system under test Tor instance to get the
> entry_guards informations.
> [...]
> Do any of you see another way?

One thing about tests that is *crucial* to get right: they need to be
fast. If it is slow, it is unlikely to be run often. And every single
second adds delay to the feedback loop, which means that developers are
likely to loose focus when they try to fix things.

So I think what would be best would actually to use, for most of the
tests, our own Tor network (see TestingTorNetwork option), started
beforehands. We could give an option at Tails boot which would make it
use our given set of authorities. This should give us faster and more
reliable tests.

(I'd also think it is worth having a look at qemu snapshot capabilities.
It is probably possible to run most tests at a saved state that would be
after the greeter.)

--
Ague