Avocado-framework

Hello to all test enthusiasts out there, specially to those that
cherish, care or are just keeping an eye on the greenest test
framework there is: Avocado release 0.34.0, aka The Hour of the Star,
is now out!

The main changes in Avocado for this release are:
- A complete overhaul of the logging and output implementation. This
means that all Avocado output uses the standard Python logging library
making it very consistent and easy to understand [1].
- Based on the logging and output overhaul, the command line test
runner is now very flexible with its output. A user can choose
exactly what should be output. Examples include application output
only, test output only, both application and test output or any
other combination of the builtin streams. The user visible command
line option that controls this behavior is `--show`, which is an
application level option, that is, it's available to all avocado
commands. [2]
- Besides the builtin streams, test writers can use the standard
Python logging API to create new streams. These streams can be shown
on the command line as mentioned before, or persisted automatically
in the job results by means of the `--store-logging-stream` command
line option. [3][4]
- The new `avocado.core.safeloader` module, intends to make it easier
to to write new test loaders for various types of Python
code. [5][6]
- Based on the new `avocado.core.safeloader` module, a contrib script
called `avocado-find-unittests`, returns the name of
unittest.TestCase based tests found on a given number of Python
source code files. [7]
- Avocado is now able to run its own selftest suite. By leveraging the
`avocado-find-unittests` contrib script and the External Runner [8]
feature. A Makefile target is available, allowing developers to run
`make selfcheck` to have the selftest suite run by Avocado. [9]
- Partial Python 3 support. A number of changes were introduced that
allow concurrent Python 2 and 3 support on the same code base. Even
though the support for Python 3 is still _incomplete_, the `avocado`
command line application can already run some limited commands at
this point.
- Asset fetcher utility library. This new utility library, and
INSTRUMENTED test feature, allows users to transparently request
external assets to be used in tests, having them cached for later
use. [10]
- Further cleanups in the public namespace of the avocado Test class.
- [BUG FIX] Input from the local system was being passed to remote
systems when running tests with either in remote systems or VMs.
- [BUG FIX] HTML report stability improvements, including better
Unicode handling and support for other versions of the Pystache
library.
- [BUG FIX] Atomic updates of the "latest" job symlink, allows for
more reliable user experiences when running multiple parallel jobs.
- [BUG FIX] The avocado.core.data_dir module now dynamically checks
the configuration system when deciding where the data directory
should be located. This allows for later updates, such as when
giving one extra `--config` parameter in the command line, to be
applied consistently throughout the framework and test code.
- [MAINTENANCE] The CI jobs now run full checks on each commit on
any proposed PR, not only on its topmost commit. This gives higher
confidence that a commit in a series is not causing breakage that
a later commit then inadvertently fixes.

For a complete list of changes please check the Avocado changelog[11].

For Avocado-VT, please check the full Avocado-VT changelog[12].

Avocado Videos

As yet another way to let users know about what's available in
Avocado, we're introducing short videos with very targeted content on
our very own YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP4xob52XwRad0bU_8V28rQ

The first video available demonstrates a couple of new features
related to the advanced logging mechanisms, introduced on this
release:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ur_p5p6YiQ

Install avocado

Instructions are available in our documentation on how to install
either with packages or from source[13].

Updated RPM packages are be available in the project repos for
Fedora 22, Fedora 23, EPEL 6 and EPEL 7.

Happy hacking and testing!

---

[1] http://avocado-framework.readthedocs.org/en/0.34.0/LoggingSystem.html
[2] http://avocado-framework.readthedocs.org/en/0.34.0/LoggingSystem.html#tweaking-the-ui
[3] http://avocado-framework.readthedocs.org/en/0.34.0/LoggingSystem.html#storing-custom-logs
[4] http://avocado-framework.readthedocs.org/en/0.34.0/WritingTests.html#advanced-logging-capabilities
[5] https://github.com/avocado-framework/avocado/blob/0.34.0/avocado/core/safeloader.py
[6] http://avocado-framework.readthedocs.org/en/0.34.0/api/core/avocado.core.html#module-avocado.core.safeloader
[7] https://github.com/avocado-framework/avocado/blob/0.34.0/contrib/avocado-find-unittests
[8] http://avocado-framework.readthedocs.org/en/0.34.0/GetStartedGuide.html#running-tests-with-an-external-runner
[9] https://github.com/avocado-framework/avocado/blob/0.34.0/Makefile#L33
[10] http://avocado-framework.readthedocs.org/en/0.34.0/WritingTests.html#fetching-asset-files
[11] https://github.com/avocado-framework/avocado/compare/0.33.0...0.34.0
[12] https://github.com/avocado-framework/avocado-vt/compare/0.33.0...0.34.0
[13] http://avocado-framework.readthedocs.org/en/latest/GetStartedGuide.html#installing-avocado

Hi everyone! Right on time for the holidays, Avocado reaches the end
of Sprint 31, and together with it, we're very happy to announce a brand
new release! This version brings stability fixes and improvements to
both Avocado and Avocado-VT, some new features and a major redesign of
our plugin architecture.

For Avocado the main changes are:
- It's now possible to register callback functions to be executed when
all tests finish, that is, at the end of a particular job[1].
- The software manager utility library received a lot of love on the
Debian side of things. If you're writing tests that install software
packages on Debian systems, you may be in for some nice treats and
much more reliable results.
- Passing malformed commands (such as ones that can not be properly
split by the standard shlex library) to the process utility library
is now better dealt with.
- The test runner code received some refactors and it's a lot easier
to follow. If you want to understand how the Avocado test runner
communicates with the processes that run the test themselves, you
may have a much better code reading experience now.
- Updated inspektor to the latest and greatest, so that our code is
kept is shiny and good looking (and performing) as possible.
- Fixes to the utility GIT library when using a specific local branch
name.
- Changes that allow our selftest suite to run properly on virtualenvs.
- Proper installation requirements definition for Python 2.6 systems.
- A completely new plugin architecture[2]. Now we offload all plugin
discovery and loading to the Stevedore library. Avocado now defines
precise (and simpler) interfaces for plugin writers. Please be aware
that the public and documented interfaces for plugins, at the
moment, allows adding new commands to the avocado command line app,
or adding new options to existing commands. Other functionality can
be achived by "abusing" the core avocado API from within
plugins. Our goal is to expand the interfaces so that other areas of
the framework can be extended just as easily.

For a complete list of changes please check the Avocado changelog[3].

Avocado-VT received just too many fixes and improvements to
list. Please refer to the changelog[4] for more information.

Install avocado

Instructions are available in our documentation on how to install
either with packages or from source[5].

Within a couple of hours, updated RPM packages will be available in
the project repos for Fedora 22, Fedora 23, EPEL 6 and EPEL 7.

Happy hacking and testing!

---

[1] http://avocado-framework.readthedocs.org/en/0.31.0/ReferenceGuide.html#job-cleanup
[2] http://avocado-framework.readthedocs.org/en/0.31.0/Plugins.html
[3] https://github.com/avocado-framework/avocado/compare/0.30.0...0.31.0
[4] https://github.com/avocado-framework/avocado-vt/compare/0.30.0...0.31.0
[5] http://avocado-framework.readthedocs.org/en/0.31.0/GetStartedGuide.html

Hello! Avocado reaches the end of Sprint 30, and with it, we have a new release available! This version brings stability fixes and improvements to both Avocado and Avocado-vt.

As software doesn't spring out of life itself, we'd like to acknowledge the major contributions by Lucas (AKA lmr) since the dawn of time for Avocado (and earlier projects like Autotest and virt-test). Although the Avocado team at Red Hat was hit by some changes, we're already extremely happy to see that this major contributor (and good friend) has not gone too far.

Now back to the more informational part of the release notes. For Avocado the main changes are:
- New RPM repository location, check the docs[1] for instructions on how to install the latest releases
- Makefile rules for building RPMs are now based on mock, to ensure sound dependencies
- Packaged versions are now available for Fedora 22, newly released Fedora 23, EL6 and EL7
- The software manager utility library now supports DNF
- The avocado test runner now supports a dry run mode, which allows users to check how a job would be executed, including tests that would be found and parameters that would be passed to it. This is currently complementary to the avocado list command.
- The avocado test runner now supports running simple tests with parameters. This may come in handy for simple use cases when Avocado will wrap a test suite, but the test suite needs some command line arguments.

Avocado-vt also received many bugfixes[3]. Please refer to the changelog for more information.

Install avocado

Instructions are available in our documentation on how to install either with packages or from source[1].

Happy hacking and testing!

---

[1] http://avocado-framework.readthedocs.org/en/0.30.0/GetStartedGuide.html
[2] https://github.com/avocado-framework/avocado/compare/0.29.0...0.30.0
[3] https://github.com/avocado-framework/avocado-vt/compare/0.29.0...0.30.0

[2] http://avocado-framework.readthedocs.org/en/0.29.0/ReferenceGuide.html#test-resolution
[3] http://avocado-framework.readthedocs.org/en/0.29.0/Loaders.html
[4] https://github.com/avocado-framework/avocado/compare/0.28.0...0.29.0

Hi guys, we're up to a new avocado release! It's basically a bugfix release, with a few usability tweaks.
- The avocado human output received some extra tweaks. Here's how it looks now:

$ avocado run passtest
JOB ID : f186c729dd234c8fdf4a46f297ff0863684e2955
JOB LOG : /home/lmr/avocado/job-results/job-2015-08-15T08.09-f186c72/job.log
TESTS : 1
(1/1) passtest.py:PassTest.test: PASS (0.00 s)
RESULTS : PASS 1 | ERROR 0 | FAIL 0 | SKIP 0 | WARN 0 | INTERRUPT 0
JOB HTML : /home/lmr/avocado/job-results/job-2015-08-15T08.09-f186c72/html/results.html
TIME : 0.00 s
- Bugfixes. You may refer to [1] for the full list of 58 commits.

Changes in avocado-vt:
- Bugfixes. In particular, a lot of issues related to --vt-type libvirt were fixed and now that backend is fully functional.

Avocado 0.27.0 released!

Hi guys, here I am, announcing yet another avocado release! The most exciting news for this release is that our avocado-vt plugin was merged with the virt-test project. The avocado-vt plugin will be very important for QEMU/KVM/Libvirt developers, so the main avocado received updates to better support the goal of having a good quality avocado-vt.

Changes in avocado:
- The avocado human output received some tweaks and it's more compact, while still being informative. Here's an example:


JOB ID : f2f5060440bd57cba646c1f223ec8c40d03f539b
JOB LOG : /home/user/avocado/job-results/job-2015-07-27T17.13-f2f5060/job.log
JOB HTML : /home/user/avocado/job-results/job-2015-07-27T17.13-f2f5060/html/results.html
TESTS : 1
(1/1) passtest.py:PassTest.test: PASS (0.00 s)
RESULTS : PASS 1 | ERROR 0 | FAIL 0 | SKIP 0 | WARN 0 | INTERRUPT 0
TIME : 0.00 s

- The avocado test loader was refactored and behaves more consistently in different test loading scenarios.
- The `utils` API received new modules and functions:
- NEW avocado.utils.cpu: APIs related to CPU information on linux boxes [1]
- NEW avocado.utils.git: APIs to clone/update git repos [2]
- NEW avocado.utils.iso9660: Get information about ISO files [3]
- NEW avocado.utils.service: APIs to control services on linux boxes (systemv and systemd) [4]
- NEW avocado.utils.output: APIs that help avocado based CLI programs to display results to users [5]
- UPDATE avocado.utils.download: Add url_download_interactive
- UPDATE avocado.utils.download: Add new params to get_file
- Bugfixes. You may refer to [6] for the full list of 64 commits.

Changes in avocado-vt:
- Merged virt-test into avocado-vt. Basically, the virt-test core library (virttest) replaced most uses of autotest by equivalent avocado API calls, and its code was brought up to the virt-test repository [7]. This means, among other things, that you can simply install avocado-vt through RPM and enjoy all the virt tests without having to clone another repository manually to bootstrap your tests. More details about the process will be sent on an e-mail to the avocado and virt-test mailing lists. Please go to [8] for instructions on how to get started with all our new tools.

See you in a couple of weeks for our next release! Happy testing!

The avocado development team

Links

[1] http://avocado-framework.readthedocs.org/en/latest/api/utils/avocado.utils.html#module-avocado.utils.cpu
[2] http://avocado-framework.readthedocs.org/en/latest/api/utils/avocado.utils.html#module-avocado.utils.git
[3] http://avocado-framework.readthedocs.org/en/latest/api/utils/avocado.utils.html#module-avocado.utils.iso9660
[4] http://avocado-framework.readthedocs.org/en/latest/api/utils/avocado.utils.html#module-avocado.utils.service
[5] http://avocado-framework.readthedocs.org/en/latest/api/utils/avocado.utils.html#module-avocado.utils.output
[6] https://github.com/avocado-framework/avocado/compare/0.26.0...0.27.0
[7] https://github.com/avocado-framework/avocado-vt/commit/20dd39ef00db712f78419f07b10b8f8edbd19942
[8] http://avocado-vt.readthedocs.org/en/latest/GetStartedGuide.html