Lachesis: a testsuite for Linux based real-time systems

Testing is a key step in software development cycle. Error and bug fixing costs can easily exceed development costs without a full and comprehensive test on the system. First efforts to introduce real-time features in the Linux kernel are now more than ten years old. Nevertheless, no comprehensive testsuites is able to assess the functionality or the conformance to the real-time operating systems standards of the Linux kernel and of real-time nanokernels that rely on it. In this paper we propose Lachesis, an automated testsuite derived from the LTP (Linux Test Project) real-time tests. Lachesis main goals are: to provide extensive and comprehensive testing of real-time Linux features; to provide a set of functional, regression, performance and stress test, either developing or porting them from other testsuites; to design and experiment a series of build tests; to minimize development time for new tests; to make the testsuite extensible and portable. Lachesis can be used to test Linux, PREEMPT_RT, RTAI and Xenomai real-time features and performances. It provides some tests for SCHED_DEADLINE patch, too. Lachesis is now under active development: extensions to other real-time systems and more tests are planned to be added in the near future.