Hello all,

I've been working on tests for the flow API recently, and I've hit a point
where I think runtime code generation would be useful. For context, the way
the test suite is architected right now, I start up testpmd in the
set_up_all function, and then every single flow rule that is tested get
it's own test case. I did this so that we can have the benefits of only
starting testpmd once, but we can still have the granularity of knowing
exactly what failed. Currently, I have a script which generates all 54
pattern matching test cases and prints them out, this means that I can copy
and paste the generated test cases into the test suite. I am concerned
about someone who needs to maintain this test suite afterward not receiving
that important bit of information. The simple solution to this problem that
I see is to modify the test suite to add the test cases at runtime.

The reason I'm reaching out instead of just doing this and submitting this
is that I wanted to make sure that there no strong objections before
starting. Doing this would probably involve the use of exec to avoid
needing to hook parts of the interpreter to generate the symbol tree
directly. Performance isn't an issue since this takes roughly 3/1000 of a
second.

More details on the plan for the test suite can be found at
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_jEciQFZ-Lj1ASF_mQbCnB3U5FefdW2Z84HP1y-GJek/edit?usp=sharing

I'd appreciate any concerns or suggestions on this.

Owen Hilyard
UNH InterOperability Laboratory