Adapt Tests to Allow External Server Connections

[Nikhil-Manglore]

Updating the valkey-test-framework to accept connections from external servers as opposed to always starting a new server

[zackcam]

Just question in general, I assume you used this in JSON module, did you try the rdb load for that module with external?

[KarthikSubbarao]

Ideally, this itself should be a utility function in the framework. You can consider this in the future

[Nikhil-Manglore]

Makes sense will do it in the future

[KarthikSubbarao]

Looks like exit and startup methods are implemented by the test case itself where it runs the docker commands. But restart is the only function in the test framework which executes the docker commands.

Why do we split the code between the test and framework this way? It makes external_mode hard to use.

It would be nice if all the 3 docker commands are executed inside the test framework OR all 3 commands are executed by the test itself. Having some functionalities implemented by the test framework and some by the test is not a great approach IMO

Questions:

1. Is external_mode supposed to be a way for test developers to run tests against any server (not just docker)? If so, we should not be running docker commands in the restart function. It would be better to move the docker commands outside the test framework and into the test.

2. Is external_mode supposed to be a way for test developers to run tests against docker specifically? If so, we can implement the startup, restart, and exit methods to execute docker commands in a controllable way (ie - controlling the port, etc).

[Nikhil-Manglore]

That makes sense. I think keeping external_mode available to best used for any server is a good idea, even though docker is the most likely. So i'll move the docker commands outside the test framework and into the test.