[Buildbot-devel] Running tests in a VMware Virtual Machine

[Sidnei da Silva]

Hi all,

I was wondering if anyone thought about this before or has it working.

VMware Server and VMware Workstation 6.0 have a COM API. We can (AFAICT) 
access this COM API from Python, using PyWin32. So, we could create a 
buildbot Step that: 

1. Creates a snapshot named after the build number
2. Copies the result of a previous step into the VM
3. Runs an installer
4. Runs tests inside the VM
5. Copies test results back to the 'guest OS' and upload 
   them to the build master

This would be mostly useful for doing integration/functional testing 
of installers and such. An example of what I have in mind is testing 
the Plone Installer for Windows by running the installer, making sure 
services start up and that the Plone site is created and accessible, 
and possibly running Selenium tests against the newly created site, 
uploading the test results back to the build master.

Thoughts? Would this be a worthy addition to the buildbot codebase 
or should it be kept as a separate extension?

-- 
Sidnei da Silva
Enfold Systems, Inc.