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-rw-r--r--Documentation/dev-tools/index.rst4
-rw-r--r--Documentation/dev-tools/testing-overview.rst117
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diff --git a/Documentation/dev-tools/index.rst b/Documentation/dev-tools/index.rst
index 43d28998118b..010a2af1e7d9 100644
--- a/Documentation/dev-tools/index.rst
+++ b/Documentation/dev-tools/index.rst
@@ -7,6 +7,9 @@ be used to work on the kernel. For now, the documents have been pulled
together without any significant effort to integrate them into a coherent
whole; patches welcome!
+A brief overview of testing-specific tools can be found in
+Documentation/dev-tools/testing-overview.rst
+
.. class:: toc-title
Table of contents
@@ -14,6 +17,7 @@ whole; patches welcome!
.. toctree::
:maxdepth: 2
+ testing-overview
checkpatch
coccinelle
sparse
diff --git a/Documentation/dev-tools/testing-overview.rst b/Documentation/dev-tools/testing-overview.rst
new file mode 100644
index 000000000000..b5b46709969c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/dev-tools/testing-overview.rst
@@ -0,0 +1,117 @@
+.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
+
+====================
+Kernel Testing Guide
+====================
+
+
+There are a number of different tools for testing the Linux kernel, so knowing
+when to use each of them can be a challenge. This document provides a rough
+overview of their differences, and how they fit together.
+
+
+Writing and Running Tests
+=========================
+
+The bulk of kernel tests are written using either the kselftest or KUnit
+frameworks. These both provide infrastructure to help make running tests and
+groups of tests easier, as well as providing helpers to aid in writing new
+tests.
+
+If you're looking to verify the behaviour of the Kernel — particularly specific
+parts of the kernel — then you'll want to use KUnit or kselftest.
+
+
+The Difference Between KUnit and kselftest
+------------------------------------------
+
+KUnit (Documentation/dev-tools/kunit/index.rst) is an entirely in-kernel system
+for "white box" testing: because test code is part of the kernel, it can access
+internal structures and functions which aren't exposed to userspace.
+
+KUnit tests therefore are best written against small, self-contained parts
+of the kernel, which can be tested in isolation. This aligns well with the
+concept of 'unit' testing.
+
+For example, a KUnit test might test an individual kernel function (or even a
+single codepath through a function, such as an error handling case), rather
+than a feature as a whole.
+
+This also makes KUnit tests very fast to build and run, allowing them to be
+run frequently as part of the development process.
+
+There is a KUnit test style guide which may give further pointers in
+Documentation/dev-tools/kunit/style.rst
+
+
+kselftest (Documentation/dev-tools/kselftest.rst), on the other hand, is
+largely implemented in userspace, and tests are normal userspace scripts or
+programs.
+
+This makes it easier to write more complicated tests, or tests which need to
+manipulate the overall system state more (e.g., spawning processes, etc.).
+However, it's not possible to call kernel functions directly from kselftest.
+This means that only kernel functionality which is exposed to userspace somehow
+(e.g. by a syscall, device, filesystem, etc.) can be tested with kselftest. To
+work around this, some tests include a companion kernel module which exposes
+more information or functionality. If a test runs mostly or entirely within the
+kernel, however, KUnit may be the more appropriate tool.
+
+kselftest is therefore suited well to tests of whole features, as these will
+expose an interface to userspace, which can be tested, but not implementation
+details. This aligns well with 'system' or 'end-to-end' testing.
+
+For example, all new system calls should be accompanied by kselftest tests.
+
+Code Coverage Tools
+===================
+
+The Linux Kernel supports two different code coverage measurement tools. These
+can be used to verify that a test is executing particular functions or lines
+of code. This is useful for determining how much of the kernel is being tested,
+and for finding corner-cases which are not covered by the appropriate test.
+
+:doc:`gcov` is GCC's coverage testing tool, which can be used with the kernel
+to get global or per-module coverage. Unlike KCOV, it does not record per-task
+coverage. Coverage data can be read from debugfs, and interpreted using the
+usual gcov tooling.
+
+:doc:`kcov` is a feature which can be built in to the kernel to allow
+capturing coverage on a per-task level. It's therefore useful for fuzzing and
+other situations where information about code executed during, for example, a
+single syscall is useful.
+
+
+Dynamic Analysis Tools
+======================
+
+The kernel also supports a number of dynamic analysis tools, which attempt to
+detect classes of issues when they occur in a running kernel. These typically
+each look for a different class of bugs, such as invalid memory accesses,
+concurrency issues such as data races, or other undefined behaviour like
+integer overflows.
+
+Some of these tools are listed below:
+
+* kmemleak detects possible memory leaks. See
+ Documentation/dev-tools/kmemleak.rst
+* KASAN detects invalid memory accesses such as out-of-bounds and
+ use-after-free errors. See Documentation/dev-tools/kasan.rst
+* UBSAN detects behaviour that is undefined by the C standard, like integer
+ overflows. See Documentation/dev-tools/ubsan.rst
+* KCSAN detects data races. See Documentation/dev-tools/kcsan.rst
+* KFENCE is a low-overhead detector of memory issues, which is much faster than
+ KASAN and can be used in production. See Documentation/dev-tools/kfence.rst
+* lockdep is a locking correctness validator. See
+ Documentation/locking/lockdep-design.rst
+* There are several other pieces of debug instrumentation in the kernel, many
+ of which can be found in lib/Kconfig.debug
+
+These tools tend to test the kernel as a whole, and do not "pass" like
+kselftest or KUnit tests. They can be combined with KUnit or kselftest by
+running tests on a kernel with these tools enabled: you can then be sure
+that none of these errors are occurring during the test.
+
+Some of these tools integrate with KUnit or kselftest and will
+automatically fail tests if an issue is detected.
+