[trondheim-pts] Supporting Abstract Results Within PTS

[Michael Larabel]

Committed to master this morning is initial support for abstract results 
generated by tests within the Phoronix Test Suite. The Phoronix Test 
Suite is no longer limited to test that provide numerical results. 
Changes have been made to both the Phoronix Test Suite and pts_Graph in 
supporting abstract data types, but there shouldn't be any regressions.

The first type that's now fully implemented is for tests that are 
measured on a pass / fail basis. For these tests, a pts_PassFailGraph 
object has been added for graphically showing the results (see example 
screenshot of the PTS Results Viewer). To implement this type, the only 
change needed on the behalf of the test maintainer is to add a 
<ResultType> tag within the <TestInformation> tag that contains the 
value of PASS_FAIL. If it hasn't been clear, the other currently 
supported result types are BAR_GRAPH and LINE_GRAPH, if you would like 
the PTS Results Viewer to use a bar or line graph, respectively. If 
<ResultType> is invalid or not defined, bar graph is the default. For 
tests relying on a pass / fail setup, the parse-results script just 
needs to print a boolean if it passed or a PASS / FAIL string. Right now 
there are no tests within Phoronix Test Suite relying upon this new 
result type, however.

If there are any other abstract types you would like to see supported, 
let us know. It's quite simple in fact supporting abstract types within 
the results viewer with the latest pts_Graph git code (pts_PassFailGraph 
is only around 80 lines of code). Only minimal changes are needed within 
pts-core for supporting the new types.

With this latest support, I am not actually too far from offering a 
result type of a (JPG/PNG) screenshot, for tests that would be good for 
an image quality comparison, and then rendering a portion of the 
screenshot from each result side-by-side within PTS Results Viewer. The 
only blockers for that is then the results XML profile relying upon 
external (JPG/PNG) file(s), which wouldn't make it too feasible at this 
time for PTS Global (due to the increased bandwidth / disk space needs).

Example Pass/Fail Screenshot: 
http://www.phoronix-test-suite.com/misc/pts_results_passfail.JPG (as you 
can see, it also has no problems scaling)

Michael