[Twisted-Python] TDDing an ssh client - mocking the server

Dave Kirby D.Kirby at tideway.com
Mon Aug 6 07:11:29 EDT 2007


Firstly a belated thanks to everyone who replied to my previous question
- I had to put my project on hold for a while, but now I am back with
more questions.

 

My objective is to use twisted to do automated logging in to multiple
ssh servers to carry out various tasks.  Currently this is done by
spawning a separate ssh executable for each session and controlling it
through pexpect, and I would like to replace this with a twisted/conch
system.

 

So far I can create conch "exec" sessions to run a single command/script
and return the result, but I would like to be able to create shell
sessions and do more interactive work.  Does anyone have any examples of
doing this?

 

The biggest issue I have at the moment is how to do Test Driven
Development with conch.  I would like to be able to mock out the server
that the ssh client talks to, so that I can keep the unit tests
self-contained and keep tight control of both sides of the interaction,
e.g. for testing failure scenarios.  I can think of three ways of doing
this:

 

1) write a separate ssh server with conch that provides the desired
behaviour, and have that spawned as a separate process by the unit
tests.

 

2) as above, but run the ssh server in the same process as the tests, so
they are both firing from the same reactor event loop.  IMHO this is
better than (1) since it is more self-contained.

 

3) stub out the low-level classes of the client so that they are not
really talking to a server at all, but simulating the correct behaviour.

 

The problem with both 1 and 2 is that they require writing test code
that is as complex as the code I am testing.  The problem with 3 is that
it assumes that I know what the correct low-level behaviour is so that I
can mock it out.  At the moment I do not grok twisted in sufficient
detail to do that.

 

How have other people tackled this?  Are there any other options that I
am missing, or code I can reuse, or other suggestions or advice?

 

TIA

--
Dave Kirby
Senior Software Engineer
T: +44 20 7368 7330 | F: +44 20 7352 4922
E: d.kirby at tideway.com | W: www.tideway.com

 

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