Document ct_slave and 'eval' terms

1 files changed, 31 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/lib/common_test/doc/src/ct_master_chapter.xml b/lib/common_test/doc/src/ct_master_chapter.xml
index 79288cfe4c..1622b5b29c 100644
--- a/lib/common_test/doc/src/ct_master_chapter.xml
+++ b/lib/common_test/doc/src/ct_master_chapter.xml
@@ -194,6 +194,37 @@
     current working directory settings are not important.</p></note>
   </section>
 
+  <section>
+    <title>Automatic startup of the test target nodes</title>
+    <marker id="ct_slave"></marker>
+    <p>Is is possible to start nodes acting like a test targets automatically
+    using a new term in the test specification, <c>node_start</c>:</p>
+    <pre>
+     {node, node1, node1@host1}.
+     {node, node2, node1@host2}.
+     {node, node3, node2@host2}.
+     {node_start, node1, [{callback_module, my_slave_callback}]}.
+     {node_start, [node2, node3], [{username, "ct_user"}, {password, "ct_password"}]}.
+    </pre>
+    <p>This test specification declares that <c>node1@host1</c> is to be started using
+    user's callback <c>my_slave_callback</c> with no parameters, and nodes <c>node1@host2</c> and
+    <c>node2@host2</c> will be started with the default callback module <c>ct_slave</c>,
+    using the given user name and password to log into remote host <c>host2</c>.</p>
+    <p>Default <seealso marker="ct_slave">ct_slave</seealso> callback module delivered with the Common Test has the following features:
+    <list>
+     <item>Starting the Erlang nodes or local or remote hosts (ssh is used for remote ones);</item>
+     <item>Ability to start Erlang emulator with the additional flags (any flags supported by <c>erl</c> are supported);</item>
+     <item>Supervision of the node being start using internal callback functions. Used to prevent hanging of started nodes. Configurable;</item>
+     <item>Monitoring of the master node by the slaves. Slave node may be stopped in case of master node termination. Configurable;</item>
+     <item>Execution of the user's functions after slave node is started. Functions can be given as a list of {Module, Function, Arguments} tuples.</item>
+    </list>
+    </p>
+    <p>If any <c>eval</c> term is specified for a node which has <c>node_start</c> term
+    defined for it, the evaluation of the functions will be deferred until the node is started.
+    The functions to be evaluated are simply added to the end of the <c>startup_functions</c> list
+    (see <seealso marker="ct_slave">ct_slave</seealso> chapter in the Reference Manual).</p>
+  </section>
+
 </chapter>