[py-dev] proposal: interaction of execnet nodes and basic node types for execnet based test execution

[Ronny Pfannschmidt]

hi,

after reading holger's blog post on
http://tetamap.wordpress.com/2009/09/26/elastic-python-deployment-networks/ i tought about what kinds of node are necessary/helpfull to deal with test-networks, and how they would interact, as well as some additional cappabilities i'd like to se

here my basic outline:

reporter
  they get all the test results in order to store and/or display them
collector
  they run the test collection collecting either all tests 
  or a given subset
runner
  they run every single test case they are given
starter
  they start the actual collect runs on a given node

given those node types, one can imply the different execution modes

standalone
  reporter+starter->collector->runner
looponfail
  * like standalone, but collect and run in a different process each run
  * pass failures as the "given subset" 
    (unless something like SIGHUP/a command tells otherwise)
N cpus
  move runners to N subprocesses
  instead of being in the same process as the collector
multiple platforms/environments at once
  starters on n environments within the same testnet

all that would imply that looponfail sits on a starter,
using reporter and collector in order to re-run the failures when
file-changes are reported

what i would like to do on top of that, is hook something like an ide
into the testnet that will start continious testing for n opened
projects in a testnet, reporting file changes to the testnet and
collecting test results for the developer

Regards Ronny