42.0 Stranger Things

The Avocado team is proud to present another release: Avocado version 42.0, aka, “Stranger Things”, is now available!

Release documentation: Avocado 42.0

The major changes introduced on this version are listed below, roughly categorized into major topics and intended audience:

Users/Test Writers

  • Multiplexer: it now defines an API to inject and merge data into the multiplexer tree. With that, it’s now possible to come up with various mechanisms to feed data into the Multiplexer. The standard way to do so continues to be by YAML files, which is now implemented in the avocado.plugins.yaml_to_mux plugin module. The –multiplex option, which used to load YAML files into the multiplexer is now deprecated in favor of –mux-yaml.

  • Docker improvements: Avocado will now name the container accordingly to the job it’s running. Also, it not allows generic Docker options to be passed by using –docker-options on the Avocado command line.

  • It’s now possible to disable plugins by using the configuration file. This is documented at disabling-a-plugin.

  • avocado.utils.iso9660: this utils module received a lot of TLC and it now provides a more complete standard API across all backend implementations. Previously, only the mount based backend implementation would support the mnt_dir API, which would point to a filesystem location where the contents of the ISO would be available. Now all other backends can support that API, given that requirements (such as having the right privileges) are met.

  • Users of the avocado.utils.process module will now be able to access the process ID in the avocado.utils.process.CmdResult

  • Users of the avocado.utils.build module will find an improved version of avocado.utils.build.make() which will now return the make process exit status code.

  • Users of the virtual machine plugin (--vm-domain and related options) will now receive better messages when errors occur.

Documentation

  • Added section on how to use custom Docker images with user’s own version of Avocado (or anything else for that matter).

  • Added section on how to install Avocado using standard OpenSUSE packages.

  • Added section on unittest compatibility limitations and caveats.

  • A link to Scylla Clusters tests has been added to the list of Avocado test repos.

  • Added section on how to install Avocado by using standard Python packages.

Developers

  • The make develop target will now activate in-tree optional plugins, such as the HTML report plugin.

  • The selftests/run script, usually called as part of make check, will now fail at the first failure (by default). This is controlled by the SELF_CHECK_CONTINUOUS environment variable.

  • The make check target can also run tests in parallel, which can be enabled by setting the environment variable AVOCADO_PARALLEL_CHECK.

Bugfixes

  • An issue where KeyboardInterrupts would be caught by the journalctl run as part of sysinfo was fixed with a workaround. The root cause appears to be located in the avocado.utils.process library, and a task is already on track to verify that possible bug.

  • avocado.util.git module had an issue where git executions would generate content that would erroneously be considered as part of the output check mechanism.

Internal improvements

  • Selftests are now run while building Enterprise Linux 6 packages. Since most Avocado developers use newer platforms for development, this should make Avocado more reliable for users of those older platforms.

For more information, please check out the complete Avocado changelog.

Release Meeting

The Avocado release meetings are now open to the community via Hangouts on Air. The meetings are recorded and made available on the Avocado Test Framework YouTube channel.

For this release, you can watch the meeting on this link.

Sprint theme: https://trello.com/c/icVc5Szx/851-sprint-theme-stranger-things