gsoc/ideas: Proper task description for "automated testing"

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+[[!meta copyright="Copyright © 2011 Free Software Foundation, Inc."]]
+
+[[!meta license="""[[!toggle id="license" text="GFDL 1.2+"]][[!toggleable
+id="license" text="Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this
+document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
+any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant
+Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts.  A copy of the license
+is included in the section entitled
+[[GNU Free Documentation License|/fdl]]."]]"""]]
+
+[[!meta title="Automated Testing Framework"]]
+
+Hurd development would benefit greatly from automated tests.
+Unit tests should be added for all the major components
+(Mach; Hurd servers and libraries).
+Also, functional tests can be performed on various levels:
+Mach; individual servers; and interaction of several servers.
+
+(The highest level would actually be testing libc functionality,
+which in turn uses the various Hurd mechanisms.
+glibc already comes with a test suite --
+though it might be desirabe to add some extra tests
+for exercising specific aspects of the Hurd...)
+
+Our page on [[automated testing|open_issues/unit_testing]] collects some relevant material.
+
+The Goal of this task is to provide testing frameworks
+that allow automatically running tests
+as part of the Hurd and Mach build processes.
+The student will have to create the necessary infrastrucure,
+and a couple of sample tests employing it.
+Ideally, all the aspects mentioned above should be covered.
+At least some have to be ready for use and upstream merging
+before the end of the summer.
+
+(As a bonus,
+in addition to these explicit tests,
+it would be helpful to integrate some methods
+for testing [[locking validity|open_issues/locking]],
+performing static code analysis etc.)
+
+This task probably requires some previous experience
+with unit testing of C programs,
+as well as dealing with complex build systems.
+No in-depth knowledge about any specific parts of the Hurd should be necessary,
+but some general understanding of the Hurd architecture
+will have to be aquired to complete this project.
+This makes it a very good project
+to get started on Hurd development :-)
+
+Possible mentors: ?
+
+Exercise: Create a program performing some simple test(s) on the Hurd or Mach code.
+It doesn't need to be integrated in the build process yet --
+a standalone progrem with it's own Makefile is fine for now.