:title: avocado :subtitle: test runner command line tool :title_upper: AVOCADO :manual_section: 1 SYNOPSIS ======== avocado [-h] [-v] [--plugins PLUGINS_DIR] [--config CONFIG_FILE] {run,list,sysinfo,multiplex,plugins,datadir} ... DESCRIPTION =========== Avocado is a modern test framework that is built on the experience accumulated with `autotest` (`http://autotest.github.io`). `avocado` is also the name of its test runner command line tool, described in this man page. For more information about the Avocado project, please check its website: http://avocado-framework.github.io/ OPTIONS ======= The following list of options are builtin, application level `avocado` options. Most other options are implemented via plugins and will depend on them being loaded:: -h, --help show this help message and exit -v, --version show program's version number and exit --plugins PLUGINS_DIR Load extra plugins from directory --config CONFIG_FILE Use custom configuration from a file Real use of avocado depends on running avocado subcommands. This a typical list of avocado subcommands:: run Run one or more tests (native test, test alias, binary or script) list List available test modules sysinfo Collect system information multiplex Generate a list of dictionaries with params from multiplex file(s) plugins List all plugins loaded distro Shows detected Linux distribution datadir List all relevant directories used by avocado To get usage instructions for a given subcommand, run it with `--help`. Example:: $ avocado multiplex --help usage: avocado multiplex [-h] [--filter-only [FILTER_ONLY [FILTER_ONLY ...]]] [--filter-out [FILTER_OUT [FILTER_OUT ...]]] [-t] [-c] multiplex_files [multiplex_files ...] positional arguments: multiplex_files Path(s) to a multiplex file(s) optional arguments: -h, --help show this help message and exit --filter-only [FILTER_ONLY [FILTER_ONLY ...]] Filter only path(s) from multiplexing --filter-out [FILTER_OUT [FILTER_OUT ...]] Filter out path(s) from multiplexing -t, --tree Shows the multiplex tree structure -c, --contents Shows the variant's content (variables) RUNNING A TEST ============== The most common use of the `avocado` command line tool is to run a test:: $ avocado run sleeptest This command will run the `sleeptest` test, as found on the standard test directories. The output should be similar to:: JOB ID : JOB LOG : /home//avocado/job-results/job--/job.log TESTS : 1 (1/1) sleeptest.py: PASS (1.00 s) RESULTS : PASS 1 | ERROR 0 | FAIL 0 | SKIP 0 | WARN 0 | INTERRUPT 0 TIME : 1.00 s The test directories will vary depending on you system and installation method used. Still, it's pretty easy to find that out as shown in the next section. DEBUGGING TESTS =============== When you are developing new tests, frequently you want to look at the straight output of the job log in the stdout, without having to tail the job log. In order to do that, you can use --show-job-log to the avocado test runner:: $ scripts/avocado run examples/tests/sleeptest.py --show-job-log Not logging /proc/slabinfo (lack of permissions) START examples/tests/sleeptest.py Test instance parameters: id = examples/tests/sleeptest.py Default parameters: sleep_length = 1.0 Test instance params override defaults whenever available Sleeping for 1.00 seconds Not logging /var/log/messages (lack of permissions) PASS examples/tests/sleeptest.py Not logging /proc/slabinfo (lack of permissions) Let's say you are debugging a test particularly large, with lots of debug output and you want to reduce this output to only messages with level 'INFO' and higher. You can set job-log-level to info to reduce the amount of output. Edit your `~/.config/avocado/avocado.conf` file and add:: [job.output] loglevel = info Running the same example with this option will give you:: $ scripts/avocado run sleeptest --show-job-log START sleeptest.py PASS sleeptest.py The levels you can choose are the levels available in the python logging system `https://docs.python.org/2/library/logging.html#logging-levels`, translated to lowercase strings, so 'notset', 'debug', 'info', 'warning', 'error', 'critical', in order of severity. As you can see, the UI output is suppressed and only the job log goes to stdout, making this a useful feature for test development/debugging. SILENCING RUNNER STDOUT ======================= You may specify --silent, that means avocado will turn off all runner stdout. Even if you specify things like --show-job-log in the CLI, --silent will have precedence and you will not get application stdout. Note that --silent does not affect on disk job logs, those continue to be generated normally. SILENCING SYSINFO REPORT ======================== You may specify --sysinfo=off and avocado will not collect profilers, hardware details and other system information, inside the job result directory. LISTING TESTS ============= The `avocado` command line tool also has a `list` command, that lists the known tests in a given path, be it a path to an individual test, or a path to a directory. If no arguments provided, avocado will inspect the contents of the test location being used by avocado (if you are in doubt about which one is that, you may use `avocado config --datadir`). The output looks like:: $ avocado list INSTRUMENTED /usr/share/avocado/tests/abort.py INSTRUMENTED /usr/share/avocado/tests/datadir.py INSTRUMENTED /usr/share/avocado/tests/doublefail.py INSTRUMENTED /usr/share/avocado/tests/doublefree.py INSTRUMENTED /usr/share/avocado/tests/errortest.py INSTRUMENTED /usr/share/avocado/tests/failtest.py INSTRUMENTED /usr/share/avocado/tests/fiotest.py INSTRUMENTED /usr/share/avocado/tests/gdbtest.py INSTRUMENTED /usr/share/avocado/tests/gendata.py INSTRUMENTED /usr/share/avocado/tests/linuxbuild.py INSTRUMENTED /usr/share/avocado/tests/multiplextest.py INSTRUMENTED /usr/share/avocado/tests/passtest.py INSTRUMENTED /usr/share/avocado/tests/skiptest.py INSTRUMENTED /usr/share/avocado/tests/sleeptenmin.py INSTRUMENTED /usr/share/avocado/tests/sleeptest.py INSTRUMENTED /usr/share/avocado/tests/synctest.py INSTRUMENTED /usr/share/avocado/tests/timeouttest.py INSTRUMENTED /usr/share/avocado/tests/trinity.py INSTRUMENTED /usr/share/avocado/tests/warntest.py INSTRUMENTED /usr/share/avocado/tests/whiteboard.py Here, `INSTRUMENTED` means that the files there are python files with an avocado test class in them, therefore, that they are what we call instrumented tests. This means those tests can use all avocado APIs and facilities. Let's try to list a directory with a bunch of executable shell scripts:: $ avocado list examples/wrappers/ SIMPLE examples/wrappers/dummy.sh SIMPLE examples/wrappers/ltrace.sh SIMPLE examples/wrappers/perf.sh SIMPLE examples/wrappers/strace.sh SIMPLE examples/wrappers/time.sh SIMPLE examples/wrappers/valgrind.sh Here, `SIMPLE` means that those files are executables, that avocado will simply execute and return PASS or FAIL depending on their return codes (PASS -> 0, FAIL -> any integer different than 0). You can also provide the `--verbose`, or `-V` flag to display files that were detected but are not avocado tests, along with summary information:: $ avocado list examples/gdb-prerun-scripts/ -V Type file NOT_A_TEST examples/gdb-prerun-scripts/README NOT_A_TEST examples/gdb-prerun-scripts/pass-sigusr1 SIMPLE: 0 INSTRUMENTED: 0 MISSING: 0 NOT_A_TEST: 2 That summarizes the basic commands you should be using more frequently when you start with avocado. Let's talk now about how avocado stores test results. EXPLORING RESULTS ================= When `avocado` runs tests, it saves all its results on your system:: JOB ID : JOB LOG : /home//avocado/job-results/job--/job.log For your convenience, `avocado` maintains a link to the latest job run (an `avocado run` command in this context), so you can always use `"latest"` to browse your test results:: $ ls /home//avocado/job-results/latest id job.log results.json results.xml sysinfo test-results The main log file is `job.log`, but every test has its own results directory:: $ ls -1 ~/avocado/job-results/latest/test-results/ sleeptest.py Since this is a directory, it should have content similar to:: $ ls -1 ~/avocado/job-results/latest/test-results/sleeptest.py/ data debug.log sysinfo MULTIPLEX ========= Avocado has a powerful tool that enables multiple test scenarios to be run using a single, unmodified test. This mechanism uses a YAML file called the 'multiplex file', that tells avocado how to multiply all possible test scenarios automatically. A command by the same name, `multiplex`, is available on the `avocado` command line tool, and enables you to see all the test scenarios that can be run:: $ avocado multiplex -c examples/tests/sleeptest.py.data/sleeptest.yaml Variants generated: Variant 1: /run/short /run/short:sleep_length => 0.5 Variant 2: /run/medium /run/medium:sleep_length => 1 Variant 3: /run/long /run/long:sleep_length => 5 Variant 4: /run/longest /run/longest:sleep_length => 10 This is a sample that varies the parameter `sleep_length` through the scenarios ``/run/short`` (sleeps for 0.5 s), ``/run/medium`` (sleeps for 1 s), ``/run/long`` (sleeps for 5s), ``/run/longest`` (sleeps for 10s). The YAML file (multiplex file) that produced the output above is:: !mux short: sleep_length: 0.5 medium: sleep_length: 1 long: sleep_length: 5 longest: sleep_length: 10 You can execute `sleeptest` in all variations exposed above with: $ avocado run sleeptest --multiplex-files examples/tests/sleeptest.py.data/sleeptest.yaml And the output should look like:: JOB ID : JOB LOG : /home//avocado/job-results/job-/job.log TESTS : 4 (1/4) sleeptest.py: PASS (0.50 s) (2/4) sleeptest.py.1: PASS (1.00 s) (3/4) sleeptest.py.2: PASS (5.01 s) (4/4) sleeptest.py.3: PASS (10.01 s) PASS : 4 ERROR : 0 FAIL : 0 SKIP : 0 WARN : 0 INTERRUPT : 0 TIME : 16.52 s The `multiplex` plugin and the test runner supports two kinds of global filters, through the command line options `--filter-only` and `--filter-out`. The `filter-only` exclusively includes one or more paths and the `filter-out` removes one or more paths from being processed. From the previous example, if we are interested to use the variants `/run/medium` and `/run/longest`, we do the following command line:: $ avocado run sleeptest --multiplex-files examples/tests/sleeptest.py.data/sleeptest.yaml \ --filter-only /run/medium /run/longest And if you want to remove `/small` from the variants created, we do the following:: $ avocado run sleeptest --multiplex-files examples/tests/sleeptest.py.data/sleeptest.yaml \ --filter-out /run/medium Note that both `--filter-only` and `--filter-out` filters can be arranged in the same command line. The multiplexer also supports default paths. The base path is ``/run/*`` but it can be overridden by ``--mux-path``, which accepts multiple arguments. What it does: it splits leaves by the provided paths. Each query goes one by one through those sub-trees and first one to hit the match returns the result. It might not solve all problems, but it can help to combine existing YAML files with your ones:: qa: # large and complex read-only file, content injected into /qa tests: timeout: 10 ... my_variants: !mux # your YAML file injected into /my_variants short: timeout: 1 long: timeout: 1000 You want to use an existing test which uses ``params.get('timeout', '*')``. Then you can use ``--mux-path '/my_variants/*' '/qa/*'`` and it'll first look in your variants. If no matches are found, then it would proceed to ``/qa/*`` Keep in mind that only slices defined in mux-path are taken into account for relative paths (the ones starting with ``*``). DEBUGGING EXECUTABLES RUN AS PART OF A TEST =========================================== One interesting avocado feature is the ability to automatically and transparently run executables that are used on a given test inside the GNU debugger. Suppose you are running a test that uses an external, compiled, image converter. Now suppose you're feeding it with different types of images, including broken image files, and it fails at a given point. You wish you could connect to the debugger at that given source location while your test is running. This is how to do just that with avocado:: $ avocado run --gdb-run-bin=convert:convert_ppm_to_raw converttest The job starts running just as usual, and so does your test:: JOB ID : JOB LOG : /home//avocado/job-results/job--/job.log TESTS : 1 (1/1) converttest.py: / The `convert` executable though, automatically runs inside GDB. Avocado will stop when the given breakpoint is reached:: TEST PAUSED because of debugger breakpoint. To DEBUG your application run: /home//avocado/job-results/job--/test-results/converttest.py/data/convert.gdb.sh NOTE: please use *disconnect* command in gdb before exiting, or else the debugged process will be KILLED From this point, you can run the generated script (`convert.gdb.sh`) to debug you application. As noted, it is strongly recommended that you *disconnect* from gdb while your executable is still running. That is, if the executable finished running while you are debugging it, avocado has no way to know about its status. Avocado will automatically send a `continue` command to the debugger when you disconnect from and exit gdb. If, for some reason you have a custom GDB, or your system does not put GDB on what avocado believes to be the standard location (`/usr/bin/gdb`), you can override that in the section `gdb.paths` of your documentation:: [gdb.paths] gdb = /usr/bin/gdb gdbserver = /usr/bin/gdbserver So running avocado after setting those will use the appropriate gdb/gdbserver path. If you are debugging a special application and need to setup GDB in custom ways by running GDB commands, you can do that with the `--gdb-prerun-commands` option:: $ avocado run --gdb-run-bin=foo:bar --gdb-prerun-commands=/tmp/disable-signals footest In this example, `/tmp/disable-signals` is a simple text file containing two lines:: signal SIGUSR1 pass signal SIGUSR1 nostop Each line is a GDB command, so you can have from simple to very complex debugging environments configured like that. WRAP EXECUTABLE 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. So, for every executable run by the test, the program name will be compared to the pattern to decide whether to wrap it or not. You can have multiples wrappers and patterns defined. Examples:: $ avocado run datadir --wrapper examples/wrappers/strace.sh Any command created by the test datadir will be wrapped on ``strace.sh``. :: $ avocado run datadir --wrapper examples/wrappers/ltrace.sh:*make \ --wrapper examples/wrappers/perf.sh:*datadir Any command that matches the pattern `*make` will be wrapper on ``ltrace.sh`` and the pattern ``*datadir`` will trigger the execution of ``perf.sh``. :: Note that it is not possible to use ``--gdb-run-bin`` together with ``--wrapper``, they are incompatible. RUNNING TESTS WITH AN INNER RUNNER ================================== It's quite common to have organically grown test suites in most software projects. These usually include a custom built, very specific test runner that knows how to find and run their own tests. Still, running those tests inside Avocado may be a good idea for various reasons, including being able to have results in different human and machine readable formats, collecting system information alongside those tests (the Avocado's `sysinfo` functionality), and more. Avocado makes that possible by means of its "inner runner" feature. The most basic way of using it is:: $ avocado run --inner-runner=/path/to/inner_runner foo bar baz In this example, Avocado will report individual test results for tests `foo`, `bar` and `baz`. The actual results will be based on the return code of individual executions of `/path/to/inner_runner foo`, `/path/to/inner_runner bar` and finally `/path/to/inner_runner baz`. As another way to explain an show how this feature works, think of the "inner runner" as some kind of interpreter and the individual tests as anything that this interpreter recognizes and is able to execute. A UNIX shell, say `/bin/sh` could be considered an inner runner, and files with shell code could be considered tests:: $ echo "exit 0" > /tmp/pass $ echo "exit 1" > /tmp/fail $ avocado run --inner-runner=/bin/sh /tmp/pass /tmp/fail JOB ID : 4a2a1d259690cc7b226e33facdde4f628ab30741 JOB LOG : /home//avocado/job-results/job--/job.log JOB HTML : /home//avocado/job-results/job--/html/results.html TESTS : 2 (1/2) /tmp/pass: PASS (0.01 s) (2/2) /tmp/fail: FAIL (0.01 s) RESULTS : PASS 1 | ERROR 0 | FAIL 1 | SKIP 0 | WARN 0 | INTERRUPT 0 TIME : 0.01 s This example is pretty obvious, and could be achieved by giving `/tmp/pass` and `/tmp/fail` shell "shebangs" (`#!/bin/sh`), making them executable (`chmod +x /tmp/pass /tmp/fail)`, and running them as "SIMPLE" tests. But now consider the following example:: $ avocado run --inner-runner=/bin/curl http://local-avocado-server:9405/jobs/ \ http://remote-avocado-server:9405/jobs/ JOB ID : 56016a1ffffaba02492fdbd5662ac0b958f51e11 JOB LOG : /home//avocado/job-results/job--/job.log JOB HTML : /home//avocado/job-results/job--/html/results.html TESTS : 2 (1/2) http://local-avocado-server:9405/jobs/: PASS (0.02 s) (2/2) http://remote-avocado-server:9405/jobs/: FAIL (3.02 s) RESULTS : PASS 1 | ERROR 0 | FAIL 1 | SKIP 0 | WARN 0 | INTERRUPT 0 TIME : 3.04 s This effectively makes `/bin/curl` an "inner test runner", responsible for trying to fetch those URLs, and reporting PASS or FAIL for each of them. RECORDING TEST REFERENCE OUTPUT =============================== As a tester, you may want to check if the output of a given application matches an expected output. In order to help with this common use case, we offer the option ``--output-check-record [mode]`` to the test runner. If this option is used, it will store the stdout or stderr of the process (or both, if you specified ``all``) being executed to reference files: ``stdout.expected`` and ``stderr.expected``. Those files will be recorded in the test data dir. The data dir is in the same directory as the test source file, named ``[source_file_name.data]``. Let's take as an example the test ``synctest.py``. In a fresh checkout of avocado, you can see:: examples/tests/synctest.py.data/stderr.expected examples/tests/synctest.py.data/stdout.expected From those 2 files, only stdout.expected is non empty:: $ cat examples/tests/synctest.py.data/stdout.expected PAR : waiting PASS : sync interrupted The output files were originally obtained using the test runner and passing the option --output-check-record all to the test runner:: $ avocado run --output-check-record all examples/tests/synctest.py JOB ID : JOB LOG : /home//avocado/job-results/job--/job.log TESTS : 1 (1/1) examples/tests/synctest.py: PASS (2.20 s) RESULTS : PASS 1 | ERROR 0 | FAIL 0 | SKIP 0 | WARN 0 | INTERRUPT 0 TIME : 2.20 s After the reference files are added, the check process is transparent, in the sense that you do not need to provide special flags to the test runner. Now, every time the test is executed, after it is done running, it will check if the outputs are exactly right before considering the test as PASSed. If you want to override the default behavior and skip output check entirely, you may provide the flag ``--output-check=off`` to the test runner. The ``avocado.utils.process`` APIs have a parameter ``allow_output_check`` (defaults to ``all``), so that you can select which process outputs will go to the reference files, should you chose to record them. You may choose ``all``, for both stdout and stderr, ``stdout``, for the stdout only, ``stderr``, for only the stderr only, or ``none``, to allow neither of them to be recorded and checked. This process works fine also with simple tests, executables that return 0 (PASSed) or != 0 (FAILed). Let's consider our bogus example:: $ cat output_record.sh #!/bin/bash echo "Hello, world!" Let's record the output (both stdout and stderr) for this one:: $ avocado run output_record.sh --output-check-record all JOB ID : JOB LOG : /home//avocado/job-results/job--/job.log TESTS : 1 (1/1) home/$USER/Code/avocado/output_record.sh: PASS (0.01 s) RESULTS : PASS 1 | ERROR 0 | FAIL 0 | SKIP 0 | WARN 0 | INTERRUPT 0 TIME : 0.01 s After this is done, you'll notice that a the test data directory appeared in the same level of our shell script, containing 2 files:: $ ls output_record.sh.data/ stderr.expected stdout.expected Let's look what's in each of them:: $ cat output_record.sh.data/stdout.expected Hello, world! $ cat output_record.sh.data/stderr.expected $ Now, every time this test runs, it'll take into account the expected files that were recorded, no need to do anything else but run the test. RUNNING REMOTE TESTS ==================== Avocado allows you to execute tests on a remote machine by means of a SSH network connection. The remote machine must be configured to accept remote connections and the Avocado framework have to be installed in both origin and remote machines. When running tests on remote machine, the test sources and its data (if any present) are transfered to the remote target, just before the test execution. After the test execution, all test results are transfered back to the origin machine. Here is how to run the sleeptest example test in a remote machine with IP address 192.168.0.123 (standard port 22), remote user name `fedora` and remote user password `123456`:: $ avocado run --remote-hostname 192.168.0.123 --remote-username fedora --remote-password 123456 The output should look like:: REMOTE LOGIN : fedora@192.168.0.123:22 JOB ID : JOB LOG : /home//avocado/job-results/job--/job.log TESTS : 1 (1/1) sleeptest.py: PASS (1.01 s) RESULTS : PASS 1 | ERROR 0 | FAIL 0 | SKIP 0 | WARN 0 | INTERRUPT 0 TIME : 1.01 s For more information, please consult the topic Remote Machine Plugin on Avocado's online documentation. LINUX DISTRIBUTION UTILITIES ============================ Avocado has some planned features that depend on knowing the Linux Distribution being used on the sytem. The most basic command prints the detected Linux Distribution:: $ avocado distro Detected distribution: fedora (x86_64) version 21 release 0 Other features are available with the same command when command line options are given, as shown by the `--help` option. For instance, it possible to create a so-called "Linux Distribution Definition" file, by inspecting an installation tree. The installation tree could be the contents of the official installation ISO or a local network mirror. These files let Avocado pinpoint if a given installed package is part of the original Linux Distribution or something else that was installed from an external repository or even manually. This, in turn, can help detecting regressions in base system pacakges that affected a given test result. To generate a definition file run:: $ avocado distro --distro-def-create --distro-def-name avocadix \ --distro-def-version 1 --distro-def-arch x86_64 \ --distro-def-type rpm --distro-def-path /mnt/dvd And the output will be something like:: Loading distro information from tree... Please wait... Distro information saved to "avocadix-1-x86_64.distro" FILES ===== :: /etc/avocado/avocado.conf system wide configuration file BUGS ==== If you find a bug, please report it over our github page as an issue. LICENSE ======= Avocado is released under GPLv2 (explicit version) `http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html`. Even though most of the current code is licensed under a "and any later version" clause, some parts are specifically bound to the version 2 of the license and therefore that's the official license of the prject itself. For more details, please see the LICENSE file in the project source code directory. MORE INFORMATION ================ For more information please check Avocado's project website, located at `http://avocado-framework.github.io/`. There you'll find links to online documentation, source code and community resources. AUTHOR ====== Avocado Development Team