Test discovery

In this section you can learn how tests are being discovered and how to affect this process.

The order of test loaders

Avocado supports different types of test starting with SIMPLE tests, which are simply executable files, then unittest-like tests called INSTRUMENTED up to some tests like the avocado-vt ones, which uses complex matrix of tests from config files that don’t directly map to existing files. Given the number of loaders, the mapping from test names on the command line to executed tests might not always be unique. Additionally some people might always (or for given run) want to execute only tests of a single type.

To adjust this behavior you can either tweak plugins.loaders in avocado settings (/etc/avocado/), or temporarily using --loaders (option of avocado run) option.

This option allows you to specify order and some params of the available test loaders. You can specify either loader_name (file), loader_name + TEST_TYPE (file.SIMPLE) and for some loaders even additional params passed after : (external:/bin/echo -e. You can also supply @DEFAULT, which injects into that position all the remaining unused loaders.

To get help about --loaders:

$ avocado run --loaders ?
$ avocado run --loaders external:?

Example of how --loaders affects the produced tests (manually gathered as some of them result in error):

$ avocado run passtest.py boot this_does_not_exist /bin/echo
    > INSTRUMENTED passtest.py:PassTest.test
    > VT           io-github-autotest-qemu.boot
    > MISSING      this_does_not_exist
    > SIMPLE       /bin/echo
$ avocado run passtest.py boot this_does_not_exist /bin/echo --loaders @DEFAULT "external:/bin/echo -e"
    > INSTRUMENTED passtest.py:PassTest.test
    > VT           io-github-autotest-qemu.boot
    > EXTERNAL     this_does_not_exist
    > SIMPLE       /bin/echo
$ avocado run passtest.py boot this_does_not_exist /bin/echo --loaders file.SIMPLE file.INSTRUMENTED @DEFAULT external.EXTERNAL:/bin/echo
    > INSTRUMENTED passtest.py:PassTest.test
    > VT           io-github-autotest-qemu.boot
    > EXTERNAL     this_does_not_exist
    > SIMPLE       /bin/echo

Running simple tests with arguments

This used to be supported out of the box by running avocado run "test arg1 arg2" but it was quite confusing and removed. It is still possible to achieve that by using shell and one can even combine normal tests and the parametrized ones:

$ avocado run --loaders file external:/bin/sh -- existing_file.py "'/bin/echo something'" nonexisting-file

This will run 3 tests, the first one is a normal test defined by existing_file.py (most probably an instrumented test). Then we have /bin/echo which is going to be executed via /bin/sh -c '/bin/echo something'. The last one would be nonexisting-file which would execute /bin/sh -c nonexisting-file which most probably fails.

Note that you are responsible for quotating the test-id (see the "'/bin/echo something'" example).

Filtering tests by tags

Avocado allows tests to be given tags, which can be used to create test categories. With tags set, users can select a subset of the tests found by the test resolver (also known as test loader). For more information about the test tags, visit WritingTests.html#categorizing-tests