Installing

Avocado is primarily written in Python, so a standard Python installation is possible and often preferable. You can also install from your distro repository, if available.

Note

Please note that this installs the Avocado core functionality. Many Avocado features are distributed as non-core plugins. Visit the Avocado Plugin section on the left menu.

Tip

If you are looking for Virtualization specific testing, also consider looking at Avocado-VT installation instructions after finishing the Avocado installation.

Installing from PyPI

The simplest installation method is through pip. On most POSIX systems with Python 3.4 (or later) and pip available, installation can be performed with a single command:

$ pip3 install --user avocado-framework

This will fetch the Avocado package (and possibly some of its dependecies) from the PyPI repository, and will attempt to install it in the user’s home directory (usually under ~/.local).

Tip

If you want to perform a system-wide installation, drop the --user switch.

If you want even more isolation, Avocado can also be installed in a Python virtual environment. with no additional steps besides creating and activating the “venv” itself:

$ python3 -m venv /path/to/new/virtual_environment
$ source /path/to/new/virtual_environment/bin/activate
$ pip3 install avocado-framework

Installing from packages

Fedora

Avocado is available in stock Fedora 24 and later. The main package name is python-avocado, and can be installed with:

$ dnf install python-avocado

Fedora from Avocado’s own Repo

The Avocado project also makes the latest release, and the LTS (Long Term Stability) releases available from its own package repository. To use it, first get the package repositories configuration file by running the following command:

$ sudo curl https://avocado-project.org/data/repos/avocado-fedora.repo -o /etc/yum.repos.d/avocado.repo

Now check if you have the avocado and avocado-lts repositories configured by running:

$ sudo dnf repolist avocado avocado-lts
...
repo id      repo name                          status
avocado      Avocado                            50
avocado-lts  Avocado LTS (Long Term Stability)  disabled

Regular users of Avocado will want to use the standard avocado repository, which tracks the latest Avocado releases. For more information about the LTS releases, please refer to RFC: Long Term Stability and to your package management docs on how to switch to the avocado-lts repo.

Finally, after deciding between regular Avocado releases or LTS, you can install the RPM packages by running the following commands:

$ dnf install python-avocado

Enterprise Linux

Avocado packages for Enterprise Linux are available from the Avocado project RPM repository. Additionally, some packages from the EPEL repo are necessary, so you need to enable it first. For EL7, running the following command should do it:

$ yum install https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpm

Then you must use the Avocado project RHEL repository. Running the following command should give you the basic Avocado installation ready:

$ curl https://avocado-project.org/data/repos/avocado-el.repo -o /etc/yum.repos.d/avocado.repo
$ yum install python-avocado

The LTS (Long Term Stability) repositories are also available for Enterprise Linux. Please refer to RFC: Long Term Stability and to your package management docs on how to switch to the avocado-lts repo.

Latest Development RPM Packages from COPR

Avocado provides a repository of continuously built packages from the GitHub repository’s master branch. These packages are currently available for EL7, Fedora 28 and Fedora 29, for both x86_64 and ppc64le.

If you’re interested in using the very latest development version of Avocado from RPM packages, you can do so by running:

$ dnf copr enable @avocado/avocado-latest
$ dnf install python*-avocado*

The following image shows the status of the Avocado packages building on COPR:

https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/g/avocado/avocado-latest/package/python-avocado/status_image/last_build.png

OpenSUSE

The OpenSUSE project packages LTS versions of Avocado. You can install packages by running the following commands:

$ sudo zypper install avocado

Debian

DEB package support is available in the source tree (look at the contrib/packages/debian directory. No actual packages are provided by the Avocado project or the Debian repos.

Installing from source code

First make sure you have a basic set of packages installed. The following applies to Fedora based distributions, please adapt to your platform:

$ sudo dnf install -y python3 git gcc python3-devel python3-pip libvirt-devel libffi-devel openssl-devel libyaml-devel redhat-rpm-config xz-devel

Then to install Avocado from the git repository run:

$ git clone git://github.com/avocado-framework/avocado.git
$ cd avocado
$ sudo make requirements
$ sudo python3 setup.py install