Writing Device Drivers

Installation and Packaging Testing

Drivers are delivered to customers in packages. A package can be added or be removed from the system using a standard mechanism (see the Application Packaging Developer’s Guide).

The ability of a user to add or remove the package from a system should be tested. In testing, the package should be both installed and removed from every type of media to be used for the release. This testing should include several system configurations. Packages must not make unwarranted assumptions about the directory environment of the target system. Certain valid assumptions, however, can be made about where standard kernel files are kept. Also test adding and removing of packages on newly installed machines that have not been modified for a development environment. A common packaging error is for a package to rely on a tool or file that is used in development only. For example, no tools from the Source Compatibility package, SUNWscpu, should be used in driver installation programs.

The driver installation must be tested on a minimal Oracle Solaris system without any optional packages.