Add a "dry run" option about workload-automation HOT 2 OPEN

In addition to reboot events and workload iterations, it would also be useful for the dry run output to show configuration changes, for example writes to sysfiles.

from workload-automation.

Logging actual changes that would occur on a device may be tricky. It may be possible to implement this level of detail buy adding a "dry-run" Device interface, rather than a Runner; so the runner executes the workload as normal but all calls to execute(), set_sysfile_value(), push_file(), etc will just result in log output.

The problem is that some of these changes will occur depending on the information read from the device, so a live connection is not available, it would not be possible to log everything that would happend. Only way around it would be constrain the "dry run" option to only work if a live connection to the device is aviable. In addition, executing extensions may also result in changes on the host as well as on the device, and there is no straight forward way to shim that, as there is no unified interface for the host unlike the target device (extensions can use all the standard Python APIs to, e.g., kick off subprocess or create fils and directories etc).

On the other hand, if we're only talking about logging configuration that would be applied, rather than actual changes that would happen on the device, that would be straight forward to do with the DryRunner implmentation outlined in the OP.

from workload-automation.