added documentation for local tests

doc/local-tests.md

@@ -0,0 +1,22 @@
+# Local tests
+
+`gh-ost` is continuously tested in production via `--test-on-replica alter='engine=innodb'`. These tests check the GitHub workload and usage, but not necessarily the general case.
+
+Local tests are an additional layer of tests. They will eventually be part of continuous integration tests.
+
+Local tests test explicit use cases, such as column renames, mix of time zones, special types and alters. Traits of a single test:
+
+- Composed of a single table.
+- A single alter.
+- By default the alter is `engine=innodb`, but this can be overridden per-test
+- Scheduled DML operations, executed via `event_scheduler`.
+- `gh-ost` is set to execute and throttle for `5` seconds, at which time all tested DMLs are expected to operate.
+- The test requires a replication topology and utilizes `--test-on-replica`
+- The test checksums the two tables (original and _ghost_) and expects identical checksum
+- By default the test selects all (`*`) columns, but this can be overridden per-test
+
+Tests are found under [localtests](https://github.com/github/gh-ost/tree/master/localtests). A single test is a subdirectory and tests are iterated alphabetically.
+
+New data-integrity, synchronization issues or otherwise concerns are expected to be tested by new test cases.
+
+While this is merged work is still ongoing.

localtests/test.sh

@@ -1,6 +1,8 @@
 #!/bin/bash
 
-# set -e
+# Local integration tests. To be used by CI.
+# See https://github.com/github/gh-ost/tree/doc/local-tests.md
+#
 
 tests_path=$(dirname $0)
 test_logfile=/tmp/gh-ost-test.log