Run external program from within a test

[bartekpacia]

@mateuszwojtczak mentioned that one of our big customers has complex tests and sometimes needs to run external scripts, e.g to perform the request to the database.

We've gained the ability to perform actions on behalf of the host from within the test in #593.

We need to think of the API that our users will use for running programs on the host machine.

Here's my initial proposal for the HostAutomator.runScript() method:

Future<void> runScript(String programName, List<String> args]);

Example usage:

// integration_test/database_test.dart

await $.host.runScript('bash', ['./create_user.sh', '--username', 'user', '--some-other-param']);

For consideration:

• do we want to resemble dart:io's Process.run() and Process.start()?
• how will we share stdout and stderr with the user (possibly in real-time with the start-variant)?
• ??? please chip in :)

cc: @jBorkowska, @mateuszwojtczak, @jakubfijalkowski, @shilangyu, @fylyppo

[shilangyu]

Personally not a fan of the name runScript (the script part) since it can be used for any process, really.

how will we share stdout and stderr with the user (possibly in real-time with the start-variant)?

What is the scope of this feature? On one hand I feel like exposing too many features would just encourage usage of it (and I am not sure if it is something worth encouraging), but on the other hand lack of feature might be a blocker for some.

[bartekpacia]

True, I agree it's not a good name. What about runProcess (and, possibly an async equivalent, startProcess)?

What is the scope of this feature?

Haha, good question! I hope to gather some info from our users: @jBorkowska, @fylyppo, @Kendru98, @zoskar, @lmlikota – what do you want? :)

[jBorkowska]

I don't know bc I never needed it :) That doesn't mean it's a useless feature, just me not knowing what to propose.

[bartekpacia]

This has been implemented in #630.

[github-actions]

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