We have some packages with test suites which create a fake /sys structure for simulating particular hardware. This affects at least upower and ubuntu-drivers-common right now. So far these had a copy of a "fakesys.py" module:
https://github.com/tseliot/ubuntu-drivers-common/blob/2e8a2b/tests/fakesysfs.py
However, this stopped working with current udev, as that dropped support for the $SYSFS_PATH environment variable. umockdev is the successor of fakesys.py, has a similar API, but lots of extra features but it does not use $SYSFS_PATH but a preload library which diverts access to /sys, /dev, etc. to a temporary directory testbed. With that, all tests can run as normal user. See https://github.com/martinpitt/umockdev for the README and an introduction.
I am converting ubuntu-drivers-common's test suite to umockdev, and already changed upower's in upstream master some time ago. To be able to continue running selftests during package build I would like to start build-depending on umockdev and use it in test suites. The Ubuntu Phone developers expressed interest in using it as well.
umockdev is nothing that we would put into a default installation, it's purely a testing tool. I am the upstream and Ubuntu developer. There are currently no bugs in Ubuntu; there have been quite a number of upstream bugs so far, but I fixed them all except two wishlist bugs for new features (https://github.com/martinpitt/umockdev/issues).
Please review this package for main inclusion. Thank you in advance!
Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.