1 FATE Automated Testing Environment
2 ==================================
4 FATE is an extended regression suite on the client-side and a means
5 for results aggregation and presentation on the server-side.
7 The first part of this document explains how you can use FATE from
8 your FFmpeg source directory to test your ffmpeg binary. The second
9 part describes how you can run FATE to submit the results to FFmpeg's
12 In any way you can have a look at the publicly viewable FATE results
13 by visiting this website:
15 http://fate.ffmpeg.org/
17 This is especially recommended for all people contributing source
18 code to FFmpeg, as it can be seen if some test on some platform broke
19 with there recent contribution. This usually happens on the platforms
20 the developers could not test on.
22 The second part of this document describes how you can run FATE to
23 submit your results to FFmpeg's FATE server. If you want to submit your
24 results be sure to check that your combination of CPU, OS and compiler
25 is not already listed on the above mentioned website.
27 In the third part you can find a comprehensive listing of FATE makefile
28 targets and variables.
31 1. Using FATE from your FFmpeg source directory
32 -----------------------------------------------
34 If you want to run FATE on your machine you need to have the samples
35 in place. You can get the samples via the build target fate-rsync.
36 Use this command from the top-level source directory:
38 # make fate-rsync SAMPLES=fate-suite/
39 # make fate SAMPLES=fate-suite/
41 The above commands set the samples location by passing a makefile
42 variable via command line. It is also possible to set the samples
43 location at source configuration time by invoking configure with
44 `--samples=<path to the samples directory>'. Afterwards you can
45 invoke the makefile targets without setting the SAMPLES makefile
46 variable. This is illustrated by the following commands:
48 # ./configure --samples=fate-suite/
52 Yet another way to tell FATE about the location of the sample
53 directory is by making sure the environment variable FATE_SAMPLES
54 contains the path to your samples directory. This can be achieved
55 by e.g. putting that variable in your shell profile or by setting
56 it in your interactive session.
58 # FATE_SAMPLES=fate-suite/ make fate
61 Do not put a '~' character in the samples path to indicate a home
62 directory. Because of shell nuances, this will cause FATE to fail.
65 2. Submitting the results to the FFmpeg result aggregation server
66 -----------------------------------------------------------------
68 To submit your results to the server you should run fate through the
69 shell script tests/fate.sh from the FFmpeg sources. This script needs
70 to be invoked with a configuration file as its first argument.
72 # tests/fate.sh /path/to/fate_config
74 A configuration file template with comments describing the individual
75 configuration variables can be found at tests/fate_config.sh.template .
77 Create a configuration that suits your needs, based on the configuration
78 template. The `slot' configuration variable can be any string that is not
79 yet used, but it is suggested that you name it adhering to the following
80 pattern <arch>-<os>-<compiler>-<compiler version>. The configuration file
81 itself will be sourced in a shell script, therefore all shell features may
82 be used. This enables you to setup the environment as you need it for your
85 For your first test runs the `fate_recv' variable should be empty or
86 commented out. This will run everything as normal except that it will omit
87 the submission of the results to the server. The following files should be
88 present in $workdir as specified in the configuration file:
96 When you have everything working properly you can create an SSH key and
97 send its public part to the FATE server administrator.
99 Configure your SSH client to use public key authentication with that key
100 when connecting to the FATE server. Also do not forget to check the identity
101 of the server and to accept its host key. This can usually be achieved by
102 running your SSH client manually and killing it after you accepted the key.
103 The FATE server's fingerprint is:
105 b1:31:c8:79:3f:04:1d:f8:f2:23:26:5a:fd:55:fa:92
107 The only thing left is to automate the execution of the fate.sh script and
108 the synchronisation of the samples directory.
111 3. FATE makefile targets and variables
112 --------------------------------------
114 FATE Makefile targets:
117 Will list all fate/regression test targets.
120 Run the FATE test suite (requires the fate-suite dataset).
122 FATE Makefile variables:
125 Verbosity level, can be set to 0, 1 or 2.
126 * 0: show just the test arguments
127 * 1: show just the command used in the test
131 Specify or override the path to the FATE samples at make time, it has a
132 meaning only while running the regression tests.
135 Specify how many threads to use while running regression tests, it is
136 quite useful to detect thread-related regressions.
139 make V=1 SAMPLES=/var/fate/samples THREADS=2 fate