Code review comment for lp:~canonical-platform-qa/ubuntu-system-tests/app-launch-introspect

> This is actually my point, with the approach I suggested, the tests do not
> know if they are dealing with a snap or a deb, they are just dealing with an
> application. So for example in the case of the app launch test cases, the test
> would call calculator.launch() or web_browser.launch(), and since they are
> both extending from different classes, the apps will be launched differently.

But this would only work for for one instance of the app, either deb or snap, right? So if you wanted to run your tests against both deb and snap versions of a single application (as is the case with the app launch tests) you would have to change the base class to do so.

If we were running these tests on an deb based image we would want to test both deb and snap versions of the app, but for a snap based image we would only want to test the snap version of the app. I don't see how the approach you mentioned could work with that scenario?

>
> If we follow the mode approach, we would have to start skipping test cases
> based on the mode right? just as tests are skipped here. And when a deb is
> moved to snap we'll need to do the other way around. With the approach that I
> proposed, we don't skip tests at all and when a deb app is snapped, then we
> just change the inheritance from Deb to Snap

I think this is the key point. Doing this would require a code change, and does not allow for testing both deb and snap versions of a single application at the same time.

>
> Let's go through this over the phone. It'll be much easier, and we can get
> everyone opinion on this

Sure, we can discuss more later.