every.channel/evolution/proposals/ECP-0031-hdhr-e2e-test.md

ECP-0031: HDHomeRun End-to-End Test (Single Host, Two Nodes)

Status: Draft

Problem

We need a real end-to-end test that exercises the full ingestion and transport path against a real HDHomeRun on the LAN. Unit tests cover a lot of logic, but they cannot validate:

• live TS ingest from the tuner
• chunking on real packets
• manifest creation/signing
• stream encryption/decryption
• MoQ publish/subscribe over QUIC between two nodes
• subscriber verification and HLS write-out

Decision

Add an ignored integration test that:

• spawns ec-node moq-publish hdhr ... against a user-provided HDHomeRun host and channel
• reads the publisher's printed endpoint addr, broadcast name, and track name
• spawns ec-node moq-subscribe ... --subscribe-manifests --require-manifest --network-secret ...
• asserts that the subscriber writes index.m3u8 and at least one segment_* file

The test is opt-in and runs only when environment variables are present:

• EVERY_CHANNEL_E2E_HDHR_HOST
• EVERY_CHANNEL_E2E_HDHR_CHANNEL

Details

• Publisher uses --publish-manifests --epoch-chunks 1 --network-secret <hex>.
• Subscriber uses --require-manifest --max-invalid-chunks 0 to enforce verification.
• A new subscriber flag --stop-after N allows deterministic termination.

Consequences

• Local developers can validate true end-to-end behavior before sharing builds.
• CI remains unaffected unless explicitly enabled.