Test parameters

Note

This section describes in detail what test parameters are and how the whole variants mechanism works in Avocado. If you’re interested in the basics, see Accessing test parameters or practical view by examples in Yaml_to_mux plugin.

Avocado allows passing parameters to tests, which effectively results in several different variants of each test. These parameters are available in (test’s) self.params and are of avocado.core.varianter.AvocadoParams type.

The data for self.params are supplied by avocado.core.varianter.Varianter which asks all registered plugins for variants or uses default when no variants are defined.

Overall picture of how the params handling works is:

    +-----------+
    |           |  // Test uses AvocadoParams, with content either from
    |   Test    |  // a variant or from the test parameters given by
    |           |  // "--test-parameters"
    +-----^-----+
          |
          |
    +-----------+
    |  Runner   |  // iterates through tests and variants to run all
    +-----^-----+  // desired combinations specified by "--execution-order".
          |        // if no variants are produced by varianter plugins,
          |        // use the test parameters given by "--test-parameters"
          |
+-------------------+ provide variants +-----------------------+
|                   |<-----------------|                       |
| Varianter API     |                  | Varianter plugins API |
|                   |----------------->|                       |
+-------------------+  update defaults +-----------------------+
          ^                                ^
          |                                |
          |  // default params injected    |  // All plugins are invoked
+--------------------------------------+   |  // in turns
| +--------------+ +-----------------+ |   |
| | avocado-virt | | other providers | |   |
| +--------------+ +-----------------+ |   |
+--------------------------------------+   |
                                           |
              +----------------------------+-----+
              |                                  |
              |                                  |
              v                                  v
    +--------------------+           +-------------------------+
    | yaml_to_mux plugin |           | Other variant plugin(s) |
    +-----^--------------+           +-------------------------+
          |
          |  // yaml is parsed to MuxTree,
          |  // multiplexed and yields variants
    +---------------------------------+
    | +------------+ +--------------+ |
    | | --mux-yaml | | --mux-inject | |
    | +------------+ +--------------+ |
    +---------------------------------+

Let’s introduce the basic keywords.

TreeNode

avocado.core.tree.TreeNode

Is a node object allowing to create tree-like structures with parent->multiple_children relations and storing params. It can also report it’s environment, which is set of params gathered from root to this node. This is used in tests where instead of passing the full tree only the leaf nodes are passed and their environment represents all the values of the tree.

AvocadoParams

avocado.core.varianter.AvocadoParams

Is a “database” of params present in every (instrumented) avocado test. It’s produced during avocado.core.test.Test’s __init__ from a variant. It accepts a list of TreeNode objects; test name avocado.core.test.TestID (for logging purposes) and a list of default paths (Parameter Paths).

In test it allows querying for data by using:

self.params.get($name, $path=None, $default=None)

Where:

  • name - name of the parameter (key)
  • path - where to look for this parameter (when not specified uses mux-path)
  • default - what to return when param not found

Each variant defines a hierarchy, which is preserved so AvocadoParams follows it to return the most appropriate value or raise Exception on error.

Parameter Paths

As test params are organized in trees, it’s possible to have the same variant in several locations. When they are produced from the same TreeNode, it’s not a problem, but when they are a different values there is no way to distinguish which should be reported. One way is to use specific paths, when asking for params, but sometimes, usually when combining upstream and downstream variants, we want to get our values first and fall-back to the upstream ones when they are not found.

For example let’s say we have upstream values in /upstream/sleeptest and our values in /downstream/sleeptest. If we asked for a value using path "*", it’d raise an exception being unable to distinguish whether we want the value from /downstream or /upstream. We can set the parameter paths to ["/downstream/*", "/upstream/*"] to make all relative calls (path starting with *) to first look in nodes in /downstream and if not found look into /upstream.

More practical overview of parameter paths is in Yaml_to_mux plugin in Resolution order section.

Variant

Variant is a set of params produced by Varianter`_s and passed to the test by the test runner as ``params` argument. The simplest variant is None, which still produces an empty AvocadoParams. Also, the Variant can also be a tuple(list, paths) or just the list of avocado.core.tree.TreeNode with the params.

Dumping/Loading Variants

Depending on the number of parameters, generating the Variants can be very compute intensive. As the Variants are generated as part of the Job execution, that compute intensive task will be executed by the systems under test, causing a possibly unwanted cpu load on those systems.

To avoid such situation, you can acquire the resulting JSON serialized variants file, generated out of the variants computation, and load that file on the system where the Job will be executed.

There are two ways to acquire the JSON serialized variants file:

  • Using the --json-variants-dump option of the avocado variants command:

    $ avocado variants --mux-yaml examples/yaml_to_mux/hw/hw.yaml --json-variants-dump variants.json
    ...
    
    $ file variants.json
    variants.json: ASCII text, with very long lines, with no line terminators
    
  • Getting the auto-generated JSON serialized variants file after a Avocado Job execution:

    $ avocado run passtest.py --mux-yaml examples/yaml_to_mux/hw/hw.yaml
    ...
    
    $ file $HOME/avocado/job-results/latest/jobdata/variants.json
    $HOME/avocado/job-results/latest/jobdata/variants.json: ASCII text, with very long lines, with no line terminators
    

Once you have the variants.json file, you can load it on the system where the Job will take place:

$ avocado run passtest.py --json-variants-load variants.json
JOB ID     : f2022736b5b89d7f4cf62353d3fb4d7e3a06f075
JOB LOG    : $HOME/avocado/job-results/job-2018-02-09T14.39-f202273/job.log
 (1/6) passtest.py:PassTest.test;intel-scsi-56d0: PASS (0.04 s)
 (2/6) passtest.py:PassTest.test;intel-virtio-3d4e: PASS (0.02 s)
 (3/6) passtest.py:PassTest.test;amd-scsi-fa43: PASS (0.02 s)
 (4/6) passtest.py:PassTest.test;amd-virtio-a59a: PASS (0.02 s)
 (5/6) passtest.py:PassTest.test;arm-scsi-1c14: PASS (0.03 s)
 (6/6) passtest.py:PassTest.test;arm-virtio-5ce1: PASS (0.04 s)
RESULTS    : PASS 6 | ERROR 0 | FAIL 0 | SKIP 0 | WARN 0 | INTERRUPT 0 | CANCEL 0
JOB TIME   : 0.51 s
JOB HTML   : $HOME/avocado/job-results/job-2018-02-09T14.39-f202273/results.html

Varianter

avocado.core.varianter.Varianter

Is an internal object which is used to interact with the variants mechanism in Avocado. It’s lifecycle is compound of two stages. First it allows the core/plugins to inject default values, then it is parsed and only allows querying for values, number of variants and such.

Example workflow of avocado run passtest.py -m example.yaml is:

avocado run passtest.py -m example.yaml
  |
  + parser.finish -> Varianter.__init__  // dispatcher initializes all plugins
  |
  + $PLUGIN -> args.default_avocado_params.add_default_param  // could be used to insert default values
  |
  + job.run_tests -> Varianter.is_parsed
  |
  + job.run_tests -> Varianter.parse
  |                     // processes default params
  |                     // initializes the plugins
  |                     // updates the default values
  |
  + job._log_variants -> Varianter.to_str  // prints the human readable representation to log
  |
  + runner.run_suite -> Varianter.get_number_of_tests
  |
  + runner._iter_variants -> Varianter.itertests  // Yields variants

In order to allow force-updating the Varianter it supports ignore_new_data, which can be used to ignore new data. This is used by Job Replay to replace the current run Varianter with the one loaded from the replayed job. The workflow with ignore_new_data could look like this:

avocado run --replay latest -m example.yaml
  |
  + $PLUGIN -> args.default_avocado_params.add_default_param  // could be used to insert default values
  |
  + replay.run -> Varianter.is_parsed
  |
  + replay.run  // Varianter object is replaced with the replay job's one
  |             // Varianter.ignore_new_data is set
  |
  + $PLUGIN -> args.default_avocado_params.add_default_param  // is ignored as new data are not accepted
  |
  + job.run_tests -> Varianter.is_parsed
  |
  + job._log_variants -> Varianter.to_str
  |
  + runner.run_suite -> Varianter.get_number_of_tests
  |
  + runner._iter_variants -> Varianter.itertests

The Varianter itself can only produce an empty variant with the Default params, but it invokes all Varianter plugins and if any of them reports variants it yields them instead of the default variant.

Default params

The Default params is a mechanism to specify default values in Varianter or Varianter plugins. Their purpose is usually to define values dependent on the system which should not affect the test’s results. One example is a qemu binary location which might differ from one host to another host, but in the end they should result in qemu being executable in test. For this reason the Default params do not affects the test’s variant-id (at least not in the official Varianter plugins).

These params can be set from plugin/core by getting default_avocado_params from args and using:

default_avocado_params.add_default_parma(self, name, key, value, path=None)

Where:

  • name - name of the plugin which injects data (not yet used for anything, but we plan to allow white/black listing)
  • key - the parameter’s name
  • value - the parameter’s value
  • path - the location of this parameter. When the path does not exists yet, it’s created out of TreeNode.

Test parameters

This is an Avocado core feature, that is, it’s not dependent on any varianter plugin. In fact, it’s only active when no Varianter plugin is used and produces a valid variant.

Avocado will use those simple parameters, and will pass them to all tests in a job execution. This is done on the command line via --test-parameters, or simply, -p. It can be given multiple times for multiple parameters.

Because Avocado parameters do not have a mechanism to define their types, test code should always consider that a parameter value is a string, and convert it to the appropriate type.

Note

Some varianter plugins would implicitly set parameters with different data types, but given that the same test can be used with different, or none, varianter plugins, it’s safer if the test does an explicit check or type conversion.

Because the avocado.core.varianter.AvocadoParams mandates the concept of a parameter path (a legacy of the tree based Multiplexer) and these test parameters are flat, those test parameters are placed in the / path. This is to ensure maximum compatibility with tests that do not choose an specific parameter location.

Varianter plugins

avocado.core.plugin_interfaces.Varianter

A plugin interface that can be used to build custom plugins which are used by Varianter to get test variants. For inspiration see avocado_varianter_yaml_to_mux.YamlToMux which is an optional varianter plugin. Details about this plugin can be found here Yaml_to_mux plugin.

Multiplexer

avocado.core.mux

Multiplexer or simply Mux is an abstract concept, which was the basic idea behind the tree-like params structure with the support to produce all possible variants. There is a core implementation of basic building blocks that can be used when creating a custom plugin. There is a demonstration version of plugin using this concept in avocado_varianter_yaml_to_mux which adds a parser and then uses this multiplexer concept to define an avocado plugin to produce variants from yaml (or json) files.

Multiplexer concept

As mentioned earlier, this is an in-core implementation of building blocks intended for writing Varianter plugins based on a tree with Multiplex domains defined. The available blocks are:

  • MuxTree - Object which represents a part of the tree and handles the multiplexation, which means producing all possible variants from a tree-like object.
  • MuxPlugin - Base class to build Varianter plugins
  • MuxTreeNode - Inherits from TreeNode and adds the support for control flags (MuxTreeNode.ctrl) and multiplex domains (MuxTreeNode.multiplex).

And some support classes and methods eg. for filtering and so on.

Multiplex domains

A default AvocadoParams tree with variables could look like this:

Multiplex tree representation:
 ┣━━ paths
 ┃     → tmp: /var/tmp
 ┃     → qemu: /usr/libexec/qemu-kvm
 ┗━━ environ
     → debug: False

The multiplexer wants to produce similar structure, but also to be able to define not just one variant, but to define all possible combinations and then report the slices as variants. We use the term Multiplex domains to define that children of this node are not just different paths, but they are different values and we only want one at a time. In the representation we use double-line to visibily distinguish between normal relation and multiplexed relation. Let’s modify our example a bit:

Multiplex tree representation:
 ┣━━ paths
 ┃     → tmp: /var/tmp
 ┃     → qemu: /usr/libexec/qemu-kvm
 ┗━━ environ
      ╠══ production
      ║     → debug: False
      ╚══ debug
            → debug: True

The difference is that environ is now a multiplex node and it’s children will be yielded one at a time producing two variants:

Variant 1:
 ┣━━ paths
 ┃     → tmp: /var/tmp
 ┃     → qemu: /usr/libexec/qemu-kvm
 ┗━━ environ
      ┗━━ production
            → debug: False
Variant 2:
 ┣━━ paths
 ┃     → tmp: /var/tmp
 ┃     → qemu: /usr/libexec/qemu-kvm
 ┗━━ environ
      ┗━━ debug
            → debug: False

Note that the multiplex is only about direct children, therefore the number of leaves in variants might differ:

Multiplex tree representation:
 ┣━━ paths
 ┃     → tmp: /var/tmp
 ┃     → qemu: /usr/libexec/qemu-kvm
 ┗━━ environ
      ╠══ production
      ║     → debug: False
      ╚══ debug
           ┣━━ system
           ┃     → debug: False
           ┗━━ program
                 → debug: True

Produces one variant with /paths and /environ/production and other variant with /paths, /environ/debug/system and /environ/debug/program.

As mentioned earlier the power is not in producing one variant, but in defining huge scenarios with all possible variants. By using tree-structure with multiplex domains you can avoid most of the ugly filters you might know from Jenkin’s sparse matrix jobs. For comparison let’s have a look at the same example in avocado:

Multiplex tree representation:
 ┗━━ os
      ┣━━ distro
      ┃    ┗━━ redhat
      ┃         ╠══ fedora
      ┃         ║    ┣━━ version
      ┃         ║    ┃    ╠══ 20
      ┃         ║    ┃    ╚══ 21
      ┃         ║    ┗━━ flavor
      ┃         ║         ╠══ workstation
      ┃         ║         ╚══ cloud
      ┃         ╚══ rhel
      ┃              ╠══ 5
      ┃              ╚══ 6
      ┗━━ arch
           ╠══ i386
           ╚══ x86_64

Which produces:

Variant 1:    /os/distro/redhat/fedora/version/20, /os/distro/redhat/fedora/flavor/workstation, /os/arch/i386
Variant 2:    /os/distro/redhat/fedora/version/20, /os/distro/redhat/fedora/flavor/workstation, /os/arch/x86_64
Variant 3:    /os/distro/redhat/fedora/version/20, /os/distro/redhat/fedora/flavor/cloud, /os/arch/i386
Variant 4:    /os/distro/redhat/fedora/version/20, /os/distro/redhat/fedora/flavor/cloud, /os/arch/x86_64
Variant 5:    /os/distro/redhat/fedora/version/21, /os/distro/redhat/fedora/flavor/workstation, /os/arch/i386
Variant 6:    /os/distro/redhat/fedora/version/21, /os/distro/redhat/fedora/flavor/workstation, /os/arch/x86_64
Variant 7:    /os/distro/redhat/fedora/version/21, /os/distro/redhat/fedora/flavor/cloud, /os/arch/i386
Variant 8:    /os/distro/redhat/fedora/version/21, /os/distro/redhat/fedora/flavor/cloud, /os/arch/x86_64
Variant 9:    /os/distro/redhat/rhel/5, /os/arch/i386
Variant 10:    /os/distro/redhat/rhel/5, /os/arch/x86_64
Variant 11:    /os/distro/redhat/rhel/6, /os/arch/i386
Variant 12:    /os/distro/redhat/rhel/6, /os/arch/x86_64

Versus Jenkin’s sparse matrix:

os_version = fedora20 fedora21 rhel5 rhel6
os_flavor = none workstation cloud
arch = i386 x86_64

filter = ((os_version == "rhel5").implies(os_flavor == "none") &&
          (os_version == "rhel6").implies(os_flavor == "none")) &&
         !(os_version == "fedora20" && os_flavor == "none") &&
         !(os_version == "fedora21" && os_flavor == "none")

Which is still relatively simple example, but it grows dramatically with inner-dependencies.

MuxPlugin

avocado.core.mux.MuxPlugin

Defines the full interface required by avocado.core.plugin_interfaces.Varianter. The plugin writer should inherit from this MuxPlugin, then from the Varianter and call the:

self.initialize_mux(root, paths, debug)

Where:

  • root - is the root of your params tree (compound of TreeNode -like nodes)
  • paths - is the Parameter paths to be used in test with all variants
  • debug - whether to use debug mode (requires the passed tree to be compound of TreeNodeDebug-like nodes which stores the origin of the variant/value/environment as the value for listing purposes and is __NOT__ intended for test execution.

This method must be called before the Varianter’s second stage (the latest opportunity is during self.update_defaults). The MuxPlugin’s code will take care of the rest.

MuxTree

This is the core feature where the hard work happens. It walks the tree and remembers all leaf nodes or uses list of MuxTrees when another multiplex domain is reached while searching for a leaf.

When it’s asked to report variants, it combines one variant of each remembered item (leaf node always stays the same, but MuxTree circles through it’s values) which recursively produces all possible variants of different multiplex domains.