Improve the Headless app

[dirkwhoffmann]

• Background The Headless app is built by the GitHub runners and is used to test the integrity of the compiled app on multiple platforms. Until yesterday, the Headless app was compiled on Windows but never executed on this platform. Thus, it was only possible to check the compile process. This is fixed, and Headless is running on all platforms now.

• Current situation Up to now, the app has created an emulator instance and run a RetroShell script that checks the syntax of available commands. However, the emulator itself has never been launched because there is no Kickstart ROM.

• Enhancement Add a self-test mode that installs DiagRom as a Kickstart replacement and launch the emulator. By attaching RetroShell to the Amiga's serial port, DiagRom's output will become visible on the console (and the build logs). Thus, DiagRom can be controlled as we like by setting up a diagnosis script. The script could even emulate keyboard input or joystick movements by issuing corresponding shell commands. In self-test mode, the headless app could also check the DiagRom output for some particular string and terminate once the string has been received.

[dirkwhoffmann]

Update: The new Headless app supports three test modes:

• headless --footprint Prints size information about various ojects. In the past, I used to put too much data on the stack which made it impossible to create an emulator instance on some architectures. This test mode does not create any objects, it simply calls sizeof a couple of times.

• headless --smoke Creates an emulator instance and runs various RetroShell commands. The purpose is to check the command syntax, nothing else. No emulator thread is running.

• headless --diagnose Plugs in DiagRom 1.3 and launches the Amiga. The current script looks as follows:

  "# vAmiga Self Check",
  "# ",
  "# Dirk W. Hoffmann, 2024",
  "",
  "# Attach RetroShell to the serial port to report debug output",
  "serial set DEVICE RETROSHELL",
  "",
  "# Power up the emulator",
  "amiga power on",
  "",
  "# Let DiagRom launch and press the right mouse button after a while",
  "wait 15 seconds",
  "mouse 1 press right",
  ""
  "# Let DiagRom run for some more time",
  "wait 10 seconds",
  "",
  "# Enough testing. Terminate the application",
  "shutdown

Here is some output of the Windows GitHub runner... seems to work.