[webkit-dev] what's important in layouttests?

[Oliver Hunt]

Hi Dave,
On Jun 25, 2009, at 7:54 PM, David Jones wrote:

> I am confused about webkit's layouttests.
> 1.What's the layouttess used for? Are they provided only for  
> developers who want to create a browser with webkit to test if their  
> browser behaves right?
The (increasing inaccurately named) LayoutTests directory contains  
most of the regression tests used to try to ensure that no knew patch  
breaks any existing functionality.  Every bug fix adds a new test so  
that the bug being fixed doesn't get reintroduced later.

> 2.The layouttests use Safari to run all the tests, right?
No.  The layout tests are run under the (also increasingly miss named)  
DumpRenderTree harness.  Basically this is a per-platform application  
that embeds a webview with a set of additional APIs added to the DOM  
to improve our ability to test behaviour.

> 3.I noticed some tests need an app server, how do they start one?
The http test directory requires a web server (i *think* apache), the  
run-webkit-tests script details at http://webkit.org/quality/testing.html 
  will launch a new apache instance with all the correct parameters  
and settings required to get the correct behaviour.

> 4.Is layouttest only for Leopard? If I want to take it into my  
> project, what should I do?
The test suite is for webkit across all platforms.  Some test do  
produce different output across platforms (particularly the pixel  
tests) but in general we try to ensure that the same test results are  
valid across all platforms and webkit ports.

Hope this helps

--Oliver