Re: [RFC PATCH 00/23] NXP i.MX RT595, ARM SVD and device model unit tests

[Peter Maydell]

On Mon, 5 Aug 2024 at 21:17, Octavian Purdila <tavip@google.com> wrote:
> It also introduces unit tests for device models. To allow accessing
> registers from unit tests a system bus mock is created. The main
> advantage of unit tests for device models over QTest is that device
> models can be tested in isolation and do not require a full qemu
> machine.

On the other hand the disadvantage is that you need to add a
bunch of extra code to mock the interfaces that the device
connects to, and then you compile into the test binary a
subset of C files which weren't written with the expectation
that they got compiled into tests like that, so it feels a
bit brittle. The nice thing about qtest is that it doesn't
need you to do any of that -- you just run the QEMU machine
model and prod the devices it already has.

Do you have examples in this series of tests which you
were able to write with this unit test setup that you
wouldn't have been able to write equivalents of with the
qtest framework ?

thanks
-- PMM