sousa-gecko/testing/mozbase/docs/manifestparser.md

Managing lists of tests

.. py:currentmodule:: manifestparser

We don't always want to run all tests, all the time. Sometimes a test may be broken, in other cases we only want to run a test on a specific platform or build of Mozilla. To handle these cases (and more), we created a python library to create and use test "manifests", which codify this information.

Update for August 2023: Transition to TOML for manifestparser

As of August 2023, manifestparser will be transitioning from INI format configuration files to TOML. The new TOML format will better support future continuous integration automation and has a much more precise syntax (FFI see Bug 1821199). During the migration period both *.ini files and *.toml files will be supported. If an INI config file is specified (e.g. in moz.build) and a TOML file is present, the TOML file will be used.

{mod}manifestparser --- Create and manage test manifests

manifestparser lets you easily create and use test manifests, to control which tests are run under what circumstances.

What manifestparser gives you:

• manifests are ordered lists of tests
• tests may have an arbitrary number of key, value pairs
• the parser returns an ordered list of test data structures, which are just dicts with some keys. For example, a test with no user-specified metadata looks like this:

[{'expected': 'pass',
  'path': '/home/mozilla/mozmill/src/manifestparser/manifestparser/tests/testToolbar/testBackForwardButtons.js',
  'relpath': 'testToolbar/testBackForwardButtons.js',
  'name': 'testBackForwardButtons.js',
  'here': '/home/mozilla/mozmill/src/manifestparser/manifestparser/tests',
  'manifest': '/home/mozilla/mozmill/src/manifestparser/manifestparser/tests/manifest.toml',}]

The keys displayed here (path, relpath, name, here, and manifest) are reserved keys for manifestparser and any consuming APIs. You can add additional key, value metadata to each test.

Why have test manifests?

It is desirable to have a unified format for test manifests for testing mozilla-central, etc.

• It is desirable to be able to selectively enable or disable tests based on platform or other conditions. This should be easy to do. Currently, since many of the harnesses just crawl directories, there is no effective way of disabling a test except for removal from mozilla-central
• It is desriable to do this in a universal way so that enabling and disabling tests as well as other tasks are easily accessible to a wider audience than just those intimately familiar with the specific test framework.
• It is desirable to have other metadata on top of the test. For instance, let's say a test is marked as skipped. It would be nice to give the reason why.

Most Mozilla test harnesses work by crawling a directory structure. While this is straight-forward, manifests offer several practical advantages:

• ability to turn a test off easily: if a test is broken on m-c currently, the only way to turn it off, generally speaking, is just removing the test. Often this is undesirable, as if the test should be dismissed because other people want to land and it can't be investigated in real time (is it a failure? is the test bad? is no one around that knows the test?), then backing out a test is at best problematic. With a manifest, a test may be disabled without removing it from the tree and a bug filed with the appropriate reason:

["test_broken.js"]
disabled = "https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=123456"

• ability to run different (subsets of) tests on different platforms. Traditionally, we've done a bit of magic or had the test know what platform it would or would not run on. With manifests, you can mark what platforms a test will or will not run on and change these without changing the test.

["test_works_on_windows_only.js"]
skip-if = ["os != 'win'"]

• ability to markup tests with metadata. We have a large, complicated, and always changing infrastructure. key, value metadata may be used as an annotation to a test and appropriately curated and mined. For instance, we could mark certain tests as randomorange with a bug number, if it were desirable.
• ability to have sane and well-defined test-runs. You can keep different manifests for different test runs and ["include:FILENAME.toml"] (sub)manifests as appropriate to your needs.

Manifest Format

Manifests are *.toml (formerly *.ini) files with the section names denoting the path relative to the manifest:

["foo.js"]
["bar.js"]
["fleem.js"]

The sections are read in order. In addition, tests may include arbitrary key, value metadata to be used by the harness. You may also have a [DEFAULT] section that will give key, value pairs that will be inherited by each test unless overridden:

[DEFAULT]
type = "restart"

["lilies.js"]
color = "white"

["daffodils.js"]
color = "yellow"
type = "other"
# override type from DEFAULT

["roses.js"]
color = "red"

You can also include other manifests:

["include:subdir/anothermanifest.toml"]

And reference parent manifests to inherit keys and values from the DEFAULT section, without adding possible included tests.

["parent:../manifest.toml"]

Manifests are included relative to the directory of the manifest with the [include:] directive unless they are absolute paths.

By default you can use '#' as a comment character. Comments can start a new line, or be inline.

["roses.js"]
# a valid comment
color = "red" # another valid comment

Because in TOML all values must be quoted there is no risk of an anchor in an URL being interpreted as a comment.

["test1.js"]
url = "https://foo.com/bar#baz" # Bug 1234

Manifest Conditional Expressions

The conditional expressions used in manifests are parsed using the ExpressionParser class.

.. autoclass:: manifestparser.ExpressionParser

Consumers of this module are expected to pass in a value dictionary for evaluating conditional expressions. A common pattern is to pass the dictionary from the {mod}mozinfo module.

Data

Manifest Destiny gives tests as a list of dictionaries (in python terms).

• path: full path to the test

• relpath: relative path starting from the root directory. The root directory

  is typically the location of the root manifest, or the source repository. It can be specified at runtime by passing in rootdir to TestManifest. Defaults to the directory containing the test's ancestor manifest.

• name: file name of the test
• here: the parent directory of the manifest
• manifest: the path to the manifest containing the test

This data corresponds to a one-line manifest:

["testToolbar/testBackForwardButtons.js"]

If additional key, values were specified, they would be in this dict as well.

Outside of the reserved keys, the remaining key, values are up to convention to use. There is a (currently very minimal) generic integration layer in manifestparser for use of all harnesses, manifestparser.TestManifest. For instance, if the 'disabled' key is present, you can get the set of tests without disabled (various other queries are doable as well).

Since the system is convention-based, the harnesses may do whatever they want with the data. They may ignore it completely, they may use the provided integration layer, or they may provide their own integration layer. This should allow whatever sort of logic is desired. For instance, if in yourtestharness you wanted to run only on mondays for a certain class of tests:

tests = []
for test in manifests.tests:
    if 'runOnDay' in test:
       if calendar.day_name[calendar.weekday(*datetime.datetime.now().timetuple()[:3])].lower() == test['runOnDay'].lower():
           tests.append(test)
    else:
       tests.append(test)

To recap:

• the manifests allow you to specify test data
• the parser gives you this data
• you can use it however you want or process it further as you need

Tests are denoted by sections in an *.toml file (see {searchfox}testing/mozbase/manifestparser/tests/manifest.toml ).

Additional manifest files may be included with an [include:] directive:

["include:path-to-additional-file-manifest.toml"]

The path to included files is relative to the current manifest.

The [DEFAULT] section contains variables that all tests inherit from.

Included files will inherit the top-level variables but may override in their own [DEFAULT] section.

manifestparser Architecture

There is a two- or three-layered approach to the manifestparser architecture, depending on your needs:

1. ManifestParser: this is a generic parser for *.toml manifests that facilitates the [include:] logic and the inheritance of metadata. Despite the internal variable being called self.tests (an oversight), this layer has nothing in particular to do with tests.

2. TestManifest: this is a harness-agnostic integration layer that is test-specific. TestManifest facilitates skip-if logic.

3. Optionally, a harness will have an integration layer than inherits from TestManifest if more harness-specific customization is desired at the manifest level.

See the source code at {searchfox}testing/mozbase/manifestparser .

Filtering Manifests

After creating a TestManifest object, all manifest files are read and a list of test objects can be accessed via TestManifest.tests. However this list contains all test objects, whether they should be run or not. Normally they need to be filtered down only to the set of tests that should be run by the test harness.

To do this, a test harness can call TestManifest.active_tests:

tests = manifest.active_tests(exists=True, disabled=True, **tags)

By default, active_tests runs the filters found in {attr}~.DEFAULT_FILTERS. It also accepts two convenience arguments:

1. exists: if True (default), filter out tests that do not exist on the local file system.
2. disabled: if True (default), do not filter out tests containing the 'disabled' key (which can be set by skip-if manually).

This works for simple cases, but there are other built-in filters, or even custom filters that can be applied to the TestManifest. To do so, add the filter to TestManifest.filters:

from manifestparser.filters import subsuite
import mozinfo

filters = [subsuite('devtools')]
tests = manifest.active_tests(filters=filters, **mozinfo.info)

.. automodule:: manifestparser.filters
    :members:
    :exclude-members: filterlist,InstanceFilter,DEFAULT_FILTERS

% rstcheck: ignore-directives=autodata

.. autodata::  manifestparser.filters.DEFAULT_FILTERS
    :annotation:

For example, suppose we want to introduce a new key called timeout-if that adds a 'timeout' property to a test if a certain condition is True. The syntax in the manifest files will look like this:

["test_foo.py"]
timeout-if = ["300, os == 'win'"]

The value is <timeout>, <condition> where condition is the same format as the one in skip-if. In the above case, if os == 'win', a timeout of 300 seconds will be applied. Otherwise, no timeout will be applied. All we need to do is define the filter and add it:

from manifestparser.expression import parse
import mozinfo

def timeout_if(tests, values):
    for test in tests:
        if 'timeout-if' in test:
            timeout, condition = test['timeout-if'].split(',', 1)
            if parse(condition, **values):
                test['timeout'] = timeout
        yield test

tests = manifest.active_tests(filters=[timeout_if], **mozinfo.info)

CLI

NOTE: The manifestparser CLI is currently being updated to support TOML.

Run manifestparser help for usage information.

To create a manifest from a set of directories:

manifestparser [options] create directory <directory> <...> [create-options]

To output a manifest of tests:

manifestparser [options] write manifest <manifest> <...> -tag1 -tag2 --key1=value1 --key2=value2 ...

To copy tests and manifests from a source:

manifestparser [options] copy from_manifest to_manifest -tag1 -tag2 `key1=value1 key2=value2 ...

To update the tests associated with a manifest from a source directory:

manifestparser [options] update manifest from_directory -tag1 -tag2 --key1=value1 --key2=value2 ...

Creating Manifests

manifestparser comes with a console script, manifestparser create, that may be used to create a seed manifest structure from a directory of files. Run manifestparser help create for usage information.

Copying Manifests

To copy tests and manifests from a source:

manifestparser [options] copy from_manifest to_directory -tag1 -tag2 `key1=value1 key2=value2 ...

Updating Tests

To update the tests associated with a manifest from a source directory:

manifestparser [options] update manifest from_directory -tag1 -tag2 `key1=value1 `key2=value2 ...

Usage example

Here is an example of how to create manifests for a directory tree and update the tests listed in the manifests from an external source.

Creating Manifests

Let's say you want to make a series of manifests for a given directory structure containing .js test files:

testing/mozmill/tests/firefox/
testing/mozmill/tests/firefox/testAwesomeBar/
testing/mozmill/tests/firefox/testPreferences/
testing/mozmill/tests/firefox/testPrivateBrowsing/
testing/mozmill/tests/firefox/testSessionStore/
testing/mozmill/tests/firefox/testTechnicalTools/
testing/mozmill/tests/firefox/testToolbar/
testing/mozmill/tests/firefox/restartTests

You can use manifestparser create to do this:

$ manifestparser help create
Usage: manifestparser.py [options] create directory <directory> <...>

     create a manifest from a list of directories

Options:
  -p PATTERN, `pattern=PATTERN
                        glob pattern for files
  -i IGNORE, `ignore=IGNORE
                        directories to ignore
  -w IN_PLACE, --in-place=IN_PLACE
                        Write .ini files in place; filename to write to

We only want .js files and we want to skip the restartTests directory. We also want to write a manifest per directory, so I use the --in-place option to write the manifests:

manifestparser create . -i restartTests -p '*.js' -w manifest.ini

This creates a manifest.ini per directory that we care about with the JS test files:

testing/mozmill/tests/firefox/manifest.ini
testing/mozmill/tests/firefox/testAwesomeBar/manifest.ini
testing/mozmill/tests/firefox/testPreferences/manifest.ini
testing/mozmill/tests/firefox/testPrivateBrowsing/manifest.ini
testing/mozmill/tests/firefox/testSessionStore/manifest.ini
testing/mozmill/tests/firefox/testTechnicalTools/manifest.ini
testing/mozmill/tests/firefox/testToolbar/manifest.ini

The top-level manifest.ini merely has [include:] references to the sub manifests:

[include:testAwesomeBar/manifest.ini]
[include:testPreferences/manifest.ini]
[include:testPrivateBrowsing/manifest.ini]
[include:testSessionStore/manifest.ini]
[include:testTechnicalTools/manifest.ini]
[include:testToolbar/manifest.ini]

Each sub-level manifest contains the (.js) test files relative to it.

Updating the tests from manifests

You may need to update tests as given in manifests from a different source directory. manifestparser update was made for just this purpose:

Usage: manifestparser [options] update manifest directory -tag1 -tag2 `key1=value1 --key2=value2 ...

    update the tests as listed in a manifest from a directory

To update from a directory of tests in ~/mozmill/src/mozmill-tests/firefox/ run:

manifestparser update manifest.ini ~/mozmill/src/mozmill-tests/firefox/

Tests

manifestparser includes a suite of tests.

test_manifest.txt is a doctest that may be helpful in figuring out how to use the API. Tests are run via mach python-test testing/mozbase/manifestparser.

Using mach manifest skip-fails

The first of the mach manifest subcommands is skip-fails. This command can be used to automatically edit manifests to skip tests that are failing as well as file the corresponding bugs for the failures. This is particularly useful when "greening up" a new platform.

You may verify the proposed changes from skip-fails output and examine any local manifest changes with hg status.

Be careful, this command will create bugs in Bugzilla. To avoid this, add --bugzilla disable to your command.

Here is the usage:

$ ./mach manifest skip-fails --help
usage: mach [global arguments] manifest skip-fails [command arguments]

Sub Command Arguments:
try_url               Treeherder URL for try (please use quotes)
-b BUGZILLA, --bugzilla BUGZILLA
                        Bugzilla instance (or disable)
-m META_BUG_ID, --meta-bug-id META_BUG_ID
                        Meta Bug id
-s, --turbo           Skip all secondary failures
-t SAVE_TASKS, --save-tasks SAVE_TASKS
                        Save tasks to file
-T USE_TASKS, --use-tasks USE_TASKS
                        Use tasks from file
-f SAVE_FAILURES, --save-failures SAVE_FAILURES
                        Save failures to file
-F USE_FAILURES, --use-failures USE_FAILURES
                        Use failures from file
-M MAX_FAILURES, --max-failures MAX_FAILURES
                        Maximum number of failures to skip (-1 == no limit)
-v, --verbose         Verbose mode
-d, --dry-run         Determine manifest changes, but do not write them
$

try_url --- Treeherder URL

This is the url (usually in single quotes) from running tests in try, for example: 'https://treeherder.mozilla.org/jobs?repo=try&revision=babc28f495ee8af2e4f059e9cbd23e84efab7d0d'

--bugzilla BUGZILLA --- Bugzilla instance

By default the Bugzilla instance is bugzilla.allizom.org, but you may set it on the command line to another value such as bugzilla.mozilla.org (or by setting the environment variable BUGZILLA).

--meta-bug-id META_BUG_ID --- Meta Bug id

Any new bugs that are filed will block (be dependents of) this "meta" bug (optional).

--turbo --- Skip all secondary failures

The default skip-fails behavior is to skip only the first failure (for a given label) for each test. In turbo mode, all failures for this manifest + label will skipped.

--save-tasks SAVE_TASKS --- Save tasks to file

This feature is primarily for skip-fails development and debugging. It will save the tasks (downloaded via mozci) to the specified JSON file (which may be used in a future --use-tasks option)

--use-tasks USE_TASKS --- Use tasks from file

This feature is primarily for skip-fails development and debugging. It will uses the tasks from the specified JSON file (instead of downloading them via mozci). See also --save-tasks.

--save-failures SAVE_FAILURES --- Save failures to file

This feature is primarily for skip-fails development and debugging. It will save the failures (calculated from the tasks) to the specified JSON file (which may be used in a future --use-failures option)

--use-failures USE_FAILURES --- Use failures from file

This feature is primarily for skip-fails development and debugging. It will uses the failures from the specified JSON file (instead of downloading them via mozci). See also --save-failures.

--max-failures MAX_FAILURES --- Maximum number of failures to skip

This feature is primarily for skip-fails development and debugging. It will limit the number of failures that are skipped (default is -1 == no limit).

--verbose --- Verbose mode

Increase verbosity of output.

--dry-run --- Dry run

In dry run mode, the manifest changes (and bugs top be filed) are determined, but not written.

Bugs

Please file any bugs or feature requests at

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=Testing&component=ManifestParser

Or contact in #cia on irc.mozilla.org

Design Considerations

Contrary to some opinion, manifestparser.py and the associated *.toml format were not magically plucked from the sky but were descended upon through several design considerations.

• test manifests should be ordered. The current *.toml format supports this (as did the *.ini format)
• the manifest format should be easily human readable/writable And programmatically editable. While the *.ini format worked for a long time the underspecified syntax made it difficult to reliably parse. The new *.toml format is widely accepted, as a formal syntax as well as libraries to read and edit it (e.g. tomlkit).
• there should be a single file that may easily be transported. Traditionally, test harnesses have lived in mozilla-central. This is less true these days and it is increasingly likely that more tests will not live in mozilla-central going forward. So manifestparser.py should be highly consumable. To this end, it is a single file, as appropriate to mozilla-central, which is also a working python package deployed to PyPI for easy installation.

Historical Reference

Date-ordered list of links about how manifests came to be where they are today:

* https://wiki.mozilla.org/Auto-tools/Projects/UniversalManifest
* http://alice.nodelman.net/blog/post/2010/05/
* http://alice.nodelman.net/blog/post/universal-manifest-for-unit-tests-a-proposal/
* https://elvis314.wordpress.com/2010/07/05/improving-personal-hygiene-by-adjusting-mochitests/
* https://elvis314.wordpress.com/2010/07/27/types-of-data-we-care-about-in-a-manifest/
* https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=585106
* http://elvis314.wordpress.com/2011/05/20/converting-xpcshell-from-listing-directories-to-a-manifest/
* https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=616999
* https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Writing_xpcshell-based_unit_tests#Adding_your_tests_to_the_xpcshell_manifest
* https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1821199