Advanced usage

Test Runner Selection

To effectively run a job with tests, Avocado makes use of a well described and pluggable interface. This means that users can choose (and developers can write) their own runners.

Runner choices can be seen by running avocado plugins:

...
Plugins that run test suites on a job (runners):
nrunner nrunner based implementation of job compliant runner
runner  The conventional test runner

And to select a different test runner, say, nrunner:

avocado run --test-runner=nrunner ...

Wrap executables run by tests

Avocado allows the instrumentation of executables being run by a test in a transparent way. The user specifies a script (“the wrapper”) to be used to run the actual program called by the test.

If the instrumentation script is implemented correctly, it should not interfere with the test behavior. That is, the wrapper should avoid changing the return status, standard output and standard error messages of the original executable.

The user can be specific about which program to wrap (with a shell-like glob), or if that is omitted, a global wrapper that will apply to all programs called by the test.

Usage

This feature is implemented as a plugin, that adds the --wrapper option to the avocado run command. For a detailed explanation, please consult the Avocado man page.

Example of a transparent way of running strace as a wrapper:

#!/bin/sh
exec strace -ff -o $AVOCADO_TEST_LOGDIR/strace.log -- $@

This example file is available at examples/wrappers/strace.sh.

To have all programs started by test.py wrapped with ~/bin/my-wrapper.sh:

$ avocado run --wrapper ~/bin/my-wrapper.sh tests/test.py

To have only my-binary wrapped with ~/bin/my-wrapper.sh:

$ avocado run --wrapper ~/bin/my-wrapper.sh:*my-binary tests/test.py

The following is a working example:

$ avocado run --wrapper examples/wrappers/strace.sh /bin/true

The strace file will be located at Avocado log directory, on test-results/1-_bin_true/ subdirectory.

Caveats

  • You can only set one (global) wrapper. If you need functionality present in two wrappers, you have to combine those into a single wrapper script.
  • Only executables that are run with the avocado.utils.process APIs (and other API modules that make use of it, like mod:avocado.utils.build) are affected by this feature.