MeeGo Package Management and Update Test Plan

Component Summary

Package Management and Update is an important way for system function expansion, stability enhancement and issue fix. The Mechanism of software installation and update decide the MeeGo system's security and the complexity of user operation. Software Installation and Update application currently contains 2 components:

• Package Manager: Manage all packages; user uses it to install or remove packages; it can auto resolve packages' dependency and make a security check for packages' signature and integrity.
• System Update: Update those obsolete package in system or OS update .It provides an easy and fast way to fix old packages' issue or enhance system function and stability for users.

Feature to be Tested

The features listed here are all from Package management feature zilla, Package managment and OS update(and software management) test will cove all these features with required priority, at the same time, the test will also cover other features which are not listed in this table, such as package management GUI, CLI, i18/l10n etc.

  ls -l /var/cache/zypp/packages/core/i586/

     pkcon search group Application filter=installed

     pkcon get-detail [packagename]

   * Prepare update repo
   * pkcon get-updates
   * pkcon update <updatesname>  

 pkcon install-local XXX.rpm

 pkcon search group Applications  --filter=~installed

Feature not to be Tested

• Independent applcations functionalities testing: Packages/Applictaions installation/update/remove are in package management test scope, but applications themselves functionalities are not in this component's test coverage;
• System update will only update from default distribution repos, unconfirmed new OS update will not in this scope;

Test Strategy and Approach

Isolate logical function testing from GUI testing: Package managment and system update are to be validated from two perspectives, logic function testing and GUI testing. The former focuses on features’ functionalities, while the later dedicates to UI visual appearance and user interaction. As the characteristic of event driven application, there are multiple event paths can reach the same function. Although separated from GUI layer, logic function testing is still achieved by go through one of equivalent event paths in GUI navigation, leaving most of event paths being covered in GUI testing.

Focus on features new implemented or customized for MeeGo system: The basic idea is to validate the MeeGo Software manager and system update functions from the end users’ perspective. Test efforts will mostly be taken on the features new implemented or customized for MeeGo system.

Software manager Test Strategy: Besides the MeeGo distribution repositories, QA package repository server will also be setup to simulate scenarios of package installation and updating. Below scenarios will be covered.

• Network protocols of package repository server: HTTP/HTTPS/FTP
• Publish new packages.
• Publish upgrade version of installed package.
• exception handler

System update test strategy: Test system update from the end users' perspective, check the user private setting and data remains after the updating of system, this test simulates tow user updating scene: update system day by day and once update from final release image to the latest status.

Package security installation test strategy: Packages security installation depends on MeeGo's signature validation mechanism, both of released repository and released packages have MeeGo's official signature. Set up various signature package and repository to simulate a real situation.

Test automation:

• OS update need tester manually check update status, and need also check whether it can workable after update process, so it's hard to automation the test like other GUI or midware components;
• Pakcage management automation need more investigation. [TBD]

Test Design

Test Points

Package management and OS update test will from end user side, follow the test design guideline and application test design method, and refer to other similar dirtibution OS like fedora, then get the following test point:

Conditions

Mainly for the conditions that the application will meet, maily introduced by platform characteristic. For example, devices may in different wireless environment, users may use different input methods to write, etc.

Test Environment

Network

• Internal network uses proxy to access repos
• Access repos directly without any proxy

Hardware Platforms

• Netbook
• Handset
• Wired network
• Wireless network

Tools

• Customized repo server
• Refer to MeeGo netbook OS

QA Contact

• huajun.li@intel.com

Developers

• Zhang Qiang <qiang.z.zhang@intel.com>

How to report a bug

For Package Management component issue, please catch more logs and attach them when you reporting a bug.

Steps to get logs:

• Setup system Environment
• Install PackageKit-debuginfo, libzypp-debuginfo, which should match the version of PackageKit/libzypp
• start packagekitd manually. In one terminal execute:

   #killall -9 packagekitd
   #/usr/libexec/packagekitd -v >packagekitd.log 

• In another terminal execute your script/command to reproduce bug.
• Then you'll get packagekitd.log and /var/log/pk_backend_zypp, and these two log files are very important to fix bug in the first time. Please attach them.

Please pay attention to above suggestion, then we can shorten bug period, especially for some critical bug.

References

• Software management and system update features on feature zilla Package management and update features
• MeeGo Core Test Plan