openQA emerges from openSUSE - Update

openQA reports on testing
Source: openSUSE An open source automated testing framework, openQA 1.0, has been released by openSUSE to make it easier to test Linux distributions and other operating systems. The GPLv2 licensed framework is already running within the openSUSE process to test openSUSE Factory distributions, including the upcoming openSUSE 12.1, due mid-November.

The framework can test any operating system which can run in a virtual machine. While the operating system is running, openQA takes screenshots and logs the text coming out of the VM and then compares them to reference images and strings. The running OS is controlled by OS-autoinst, which sends virtualised keyboard and mouse events to the installed OS and is capable of examining the virtual screen so it can handle problems which may occur during the test. Currently OS-autoinst supports Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian, FreeBSD and OpenIndiana and can work with MS-DOS and Windows systems. OS-autoinst can also be used to test applications running within an OS. The results of a number of runs of openQA are available in ogv or text format.

Although capable of running and testing many platforms, the openQA web front end which allows a tester to get an overview of testing and browse screenshots for failed tests, is currently only available for openSUSE.

Update: The H talked to the openSUSE developers for more details on the wiki and openSUSE frontend. The source for the openSUSE based web frontend is available from a Gitorious repository. The developers have also now seeded an openSUSE wiki page which links to other resources for openQA.

See also:

• openSUSE Conference 2010: Making testing easier, an LWN report on openSUSE testing

(djwm)