[BuildStream] How to catch regressions in buildstream's interactive interface

[Jonathan Maw <jonathan maw codethink co uk>]

Hi,

I am working on an issue that involves changing how buildstream works 
when you use buildstream in interactive mode, fail a build, and launch 
the shell. While it's mostly the same codepath as `bst shell --build`, I 
am concerned that my ability to test its workings are extremely manual.

The solutions I can think of are:
* A checklist of behaviour that can only be manually checked? Bad, 
because it'd lead to an ever-expanding list of things to check as time 
goes on.
* Some kind of test harness that monitors stdout/stderr and can write 
commands to stdin? Very hard to write something general-purpose, and 
since it's not using machine-readable output, prone to behaving in 
unexpected ways.

Is this a goal worth pursuing? Does anyone know any other solutions?

Thanks,

Jonathan

--
Jonathan Maw, Software Engineer, Codethink Ltd.
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