launching checkbox-cli from a script that generates the launcher at runtime fails

[Jeff Lane ]

I was playing around this morning trying to find a way to have canonical-certification-server default to the correct whitelist for each release (14.04 and 16.04).

On paper, this should work:

#!/bin/bash

RELEASE=`lsb_release -r |cut -f 2`

cat << EOF | /usr/bin/env checkbox-cli
[launcher]
app_id = 2013.com.canonical.certification:certification-server
launcher_version = 1
stock_reports = text, submission_files, certification

[test plan]
unit = 2013.com.canonical.certification::$RELEASE-server-full
filter = *-server-*, *-only, *virtual*, *firmware-tests

[config]
config_filename = canonical-certification.conf
EOF

This should pass the launcher definition to checkbox-cli and go, but what really happens is that checkbox-cli launches, no unit is selected, and the UI freezes.

I am pretty sure this is a problem with subshells, at least that's what it seems like for now, but I'm not positive that's the actual issue. So, here's the bug.

[Maciej Kisielewski (kissiel)]

On my paper this shouldn't work.

checkbox-cli's arg should be a path to launcher. The stdin is used for UI interaction (p for pass, f for fail, etc.), so `cat`-ing into stdin won't feed the data as launcher. You have to use a middleman.

Some tools use magical '-' to specify, that the arg should be read from stdin, checkbox-cli doesn't have that option (yet?;))