Kernel Test Framework (KTF)

KTF is a Google Test-like environment for writing C unit tests for kernel code. Tests are implemented as kernel modules which declare each test as part of a test case. The body of each test case consists of assertions. Tests look like this:

TEST(examples, hello_ok)
{
	EXPECT_TRUE(true);
}

"examples" is the test case name, "hello_ok" the test. KTF provides many different types of assertions, see kernel/ktf.h for the complete list.

Usually tests are added on test module init via

ADD_TEST(test_name);

This registers the test with the KTF framework for later execution. There are many examples in the examples/ directory.

"ktfrun" is provided to execute tests, it communicates with the KTF kernel module via netlink socket to query available tests and trigger test execution.

The design priorities for KTF are to make it

• easy to run tests. Just ensure the ktf module is loaded, then load your test module and execute "ktfrun".

• easy to interpret results. Output from ktfrun is clear and can be filtered easily. Assertion failures indicate the line of code where the failure occurred. Results of the last test run are always available from /sys/kernel/debug/ktf/results/

• easy to add tests. Adding a test takes a few lines of code. Just (re)build the test module, unload/reload and KTF can run the test. See the examples/ directory for some hints.

• easy to analyse test behaviour (code coverage, memory utilization during test execution). We provide "ktfcov" to support enabling coverage support on a per-module basis. Coverage data is available in /sys/kernel/debug/ktf/coverage, showing how often functions were called during the coverage period, and optionally any outstanding memory allocations originating from functions that were subject to coverage.

All of the above will hopefully help Linux kernel engineers practice continuous integration and more thoroughly unit test their code.

User Documentation

See ./doc