oslo-specs/specs/liberty/oslotest-refactor-test-base-class.rst

Refactor Test Base Class in oslotest

Include the URL of your launchpad blueprint:

https://blueprints.launchpad.net/oslo?searchtext=oslotest-refactor

As a general policy we want to avoid requiring projects to use test base classes defined in libraries they do not control. Test fixtures are more composable, and easier to test themselves.

Problem description

Copied from /specs/policy/test-tools:

We originally created oslotest as a place to include the base class for all unit tests across all projects, to give the projects common behaviors in their test suites. Using a common base class is not always possible, however, when applications want to use their own base class and test fixture classes in ways that do not mix well. Multiple inheritance, in particular, is a problem because the order of setup and tear-down for test cases is harder to reason about.

Proposed change

1. Provide a fixture to change the maxDiff attribute of a test case, with a default of 10,000 as in BaseTestCase.
2. Provide a fixture to wrap fixtures.Timeout using an environment variable to set the actual timeout, based on :pyBaseTestCase._set_timeout.
3. Provide a fixture to mock stdout and stderr, based on :pyBaseTestCase._fake_output.
4. Provide a fixture to wrap fixtures.FakeLogger using an environment variable to set the actual timeout, based on :pyBaseTestCase._fake_logs.
5. Provide a fixture to create a temporary file with content to replicate the features of :pyBaseTestCase.create_tempfiles. We should use one fixture per file, and provide the full path to the resulting file as an attribute of the fixture.
6. Add DeprecationWarning to :pyBaseTestCase.setUp.

Alternatives

Leave Everything Alone

Leaving BaseTestCase alone risks making it completely obsolete as projects drop its use due to issues with multiple inheritance.

Impact on Existing APIs

The existing DeprecationWarning will not be changed other than to add the deprecation warning, so all existing users will continue to be able to use it until they move to the new fixtures.

Security impact

None

Performance Impact

None

Configuration Impact

None

Developer Impact

Developers will need to create or update their own test base classes to use the desired fixtures. The old test case will not be removed for at least one cycle, to allow for migration time.

Testing Impact

We will need unit tests for the new fixtures.

Implementation

Assignee(s)

Primary assignee:

Doug Hellmann

Milestones

Target Milestone for completion: Liberty-2

Work Items

See "Proposed change" above.

Incubation

N/A

Adoption

N/A

Library

N/A

Anticipated API Stabilization

N/A

Documentation Impact

Each change will require updates to the API documentation for oslotest.

Dependencies

• /specs/policy/test-tools

References

• /specs/policy/test-tools

Note

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode