54.0 House of Cards

The Avocado team is proud to present another release: Avocado version 54.0, aka, “House of Cards” is now available!

Release documentation: Avocado 54.0

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

Users/Test Writers

  • Avocado can now run list and run standard Python unittests, that is, tests written in Python that use the unittest library alone. This should help streamline the execution of tests on projects that use different test types. Or, it may just be what plain unittest users were waiting for to start running them with Avocado.

  • The Test ID format Avocado has been using for a while received a minor tweak, to allow for better serialization into some filesystem types, such as Microsoft Windows’ ones. Basically, the character that precedes the variant name, a separator, used to be ;, which is not allowed on some filesystems. Now, a + character is used. A Test ID sleeptest.py:SleepTest.test;short-beaf on a previous Avocado version is now sleeptest.py:SleepTest.test+short-beaf.

  • The full path of the filename that holds the currently running test is now output is the test log, under the heading Test metadata:.

  • The yaml_to_mux varianter plugin, while parsing the YAML files, would convert objects into avocado.core.tree.TreeNode. This caused when the variants were serialized (such as part of the job replay support). Objects are now converted into ordered dictionaries, which, besides supporting a proper serialization are also more easily accessible as test parameters.

  • The test profilers, which are defined by default in /etc/avocado/sysinfo/profilers, are now executed without a backing shell. While Avocado doesn’t ship with examples of shell commands as profilers, or suggests users to do so, it may be that some users could be using that functionality. If that’s the case, it will now be necessary to write a script that wraps you previous shell command. The reason for doing so, was to fix a bug that could leave profiler processes after the test had already finished.

  • The newly introduced avocado.utils.vmimage library can immensely help test writers that need access to virtual machine images in their tests. The simplest use of the API, vmimage.get() returns a ready to use disposable image (snapshot based, backed by a complete base image). Users can ask for more specific images, such as vmimage.get(arch='aarch64') for a image with a ARM OS ready to run.

  • When installing and using Avocado in a Python virtual environment, the ubiquitous “venvs”, the base data directory was one defined outside the virtual environment. Now, Avocado respects the virtual environment also in this aspect.

  • A new network related utility function, avocado.utils.network.PortTracker was ported from Avocado-Virt, given the perceived general value in a variety of tests.

  • A new memory utility utility, avocado.utils.memory.MemInfo, and its ready to use instance avocado.utils.memory.meminfo, allows easy access to most memory related information on Linux systems.

  • The complete output of tests, that is the combination of STDOUT and STDERR is now also recorded in the test result directory as a file named output.

Bug Fixes

  • As mentioned before, test profiler processes could be left running in the system, even after the test had already finished.

  • The change towards serializing YAML objects as ordered dicts, instead of as :class:`avocado.core.tree.TreeNode, also fixed a bug, that manifested itself in the command line application UI.

  • When the various skip* decorators were applied to setUp test methods, they would not be effective, and tearDown would also be called.

  • When a job was replayed, tests without variants in the original (AKA “source” job, would appear to have a variant named None in the replayed job.

Internal Changes

  • Avocado is now using the newest inspektor version 0.4.5. Developers should also update their installed versions to have comparable results to the CI checks.

  • The old avocado.test.TestName class was renamed to avocado.core.test.TestID, and its member attributes updated to reflect the fact that it covers the complete Test ID, and not just a Test Name.

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/fA4RL1eo/1100-sprint-theme-house-of-cards