788279 - Allow moztest to take in duration and not use fake start&end times

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Testing :: Mozbase, defect)

Description

[Mihnea Dobrescu-Balaur (:mihneadb)]

Not all harnesses provide start and end times so we need to be able to specify durations in the ctor for TestResult.

Comment 1

[Jonathan Griffin (:jgriffin)]

I think more generally the issue is that the current API assumes it will be used realtime, so that results will be generated via something like:

t = TestResult(...)
# run test here
t.finish(...)

But, there are many cases where this will likely not be the case, and where we'll want to generate the results ex post facto.  In some of these cases, we won't know the actual start and finish times of the tests.  And in this situation, having to call finish() might not make much sense.

Is there any disadvantage to allowing all needed fields to be specified in the ctor, for cases where we're not populating results realtime?  Jeff, what's your opinion?

Comment 2

[Jeff Hammel]

I guess my inclination is just setting time_start to 0 in these cases.  Its a bit wonky, but...

OTOH, if there was a duration argument for the ctor, I wouldn't be opposed, though it will require checks to make sure we're not passing in contradictory data.

Comment 3

[Jonathan Griffin (:jgriffin)]

I'm fine with using start_time=0; it will allow consumers some way to know that the start_time isn't real.

Comment 4

[Jonathan Griffin (:jgriffin)]

I think the consensus is not to modify moztest for this; can we close as WONTFIX?

Comment 5

[Mihnea Dobrescu-Balaur (:mihneadb)]

OK, will document the assumption and then close this.

Comment 6

[Mihnea Dobrescu-Balaur (:mihneadb)]

https://github.com/mozilla/mozbase/commit/c772c5ab89c1b2078ceb1d5f6c65bb55b7af5031