[[trials]]
== Trial: Binaries to be Tested

A trial is a set of pre-built binaries to be tested. They are typically built
by jenkins using the build scripts found in osmo-gsm-tester's source in the
'contrib/' dir.

A trial comes in the form of a directory containing a number of '*.tgz' tar
archives as well as a 'checksums.md5' file to verify the tar archives'
integrity.

When the osmo-gsm-tester is invoked to run on such a trial directory, it will
create a sub directory named 'inst' and unpack the tar archives into it.

For each test run on this trial, a new subdirectory in the trial dir is
created, named in the form of 'run.<timestamp>'. A symbolic link 'last-run'
will point at the most recently created run dir. This run dir will accumulate
the rendered configuration files used for the trial run as well as a test log
(<- *TODO*) and stdout and stderr outputs of the binaries run for the trial.
(*TODO*->) When the test is complete, jenkins parsable XML reports for the test
run will be written to the 'run.<timestamp>' subdir.