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Created by Carlos Soriano @csorianoDeveloper2 of 24 tasks completed2/24 tasks

Tests, profiling and debug framework for Nautilus

Nautilus is mostly lacking in test, profiling and debug capabilities. This project would be to ensure we have proper tests, a good code coverage and a good framework for debugging and profiling together with our GitLab CI.

Current problems

  • We don't know if Nautilus has performance issues.
  • We don't know when we break something, we have found 1 year old breaks.
  • We don't know where a memory leak is located.

Goals & use cases

  • Easily test basic critical functions.
  • Prevent regressions between commits and releases.
  • Gather data about performance and prevent performance regressions.
  • Improve debug of memory leaks.

Requirements

  • Have to run in GitLab CI.
  • Integrated with Flatpak.
  • Available to end users for providing logs.
  • Ability to test sections (Search, operations, cache...).

Relevant art

Intern requirements

  • Good knowledge of C
  • Basic knowledge of gcov
  • Basic knowledge of glib testing framework
  • Other profiling and testing tools knowledge is a plus.

Tasks

Testing

Most probably with glib testing framework, but further exploration of other tools will be necessary. There are tests already present in the test folder.

  • Make unit tests and integration tests of most critical functions of the most critical components

    • Search
    • Operations
    • NautilusFile & NautilusDirectory
    • Cache of files in NautilusFile and NautilusDirectory (To be decided if we can do this one)
    • nautilus-file-utilities.h
    • Loading of files in views
    • Network connections
    • Batch renaming
    • Directory deep counting
    • gnome-shell search functionality

  • Both unit tests and integration tests should display basic profiling (read more in the next section).

  • Testing should be split between those that doesn't require gtk and those who do, trying to avoid gtk+ most of the times.

  • Set up properly a coverity tool for unit tests, for example 'gcov'. Further exploration on what tools we can use should be done.

Profiling

  • Make profile tests for most critical components
    • Basic operations like move, copy/paste, etc. Basically most in nautilus-operations file
    • Search
    • Loading of local directories
    • Loading of network directories
  • Test should be able to be easily plugable with an external profile tool like 'perf' or Sysprof.

Debug

  • Explore what options are there for memory leaks, apart of 'valgrind'
  • Have proper debug messages in the most critical components
  • Include reference count in debug messages. See the Gtk Inspector statistics tab to have an example.
    Time estimate: 2 weeks
  • Update or remove the NAUTILUS_DEBUG framework #1220
Edited by António Fernandes
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