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depot/third_party/nixpkgs/nixos/doc/manual/development/developing-the-test-driver.chapter.md

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Developing the NixOS Test Driver

The NixOS test framework is a project of its own.

It consists of roughly the following components:

  • nixos/lib/test-driver: The Python framework that sets up the test and runs the testScript
  • nixos/lib/testing: The Nix code responsible for the wiring, written using the (NixOS) Module System.

These components are exposed publicly through:

  • nixos/lib/default.nix: The public interface that exposes the nixos/lib/testing entrypoint.
  • flake.nix: Exposes the lib.nixos, including the public test interface.

Beyond the test driver itself, its integration into NixOS and Nixpkgs is important.

  • pkgs/top-level/all-packages.nix: Defines the nixosTests attribute, used by the package tests attributes and OfBorg.
  • nixos/release.nix: Defines the tests attribute built by Hydra, independently, but analogous to nixosTests
  • nixos/release-combined.nix: Defines which tests are channel blockers.

Finally, we have legacy entrypoints that users should move away from, but are cared for on a best effort basis. These include pkgs.nixosTest, testing-python.nix and make-test-python.nix.

Testing changes to the test framework

We currently have limited unit tests for the framework itself. You may run these with nix-build -A nixosTests.nixos-test-driver.

When making significant changes to the test framework, we run the tests on Hydra, to avoid disrupting the larger NixOS project.

For this, we use the python-test-refactoring branch in the NixOS/nixpkgs repository, and its corresponding Hydra jobset. This branch is used as a pointer, and not as a feature branch.

  1. Rebase the PR onto a recent, good evaluation of nixos-unstable
  2. Create a baseline evaluation by force-pushing this revision of nixos-unstable to python-test-refactoring.
  3. Note the evaluation number (we'll call it <previous>)
  4. Push the PR to python-test-refactoring and evaluate the PR on Hydra
  5. Create a comparison URL by navigating to the latest build of the PR and adding to the URL ?compare=<previous>. This is not necessary for the evaluation that comes right after the baseline.

Review the removed tests and newly failed tests using the constructed URL; otherwise you will accidentally compare iterations of the PR instead of changes to the PR base.

As we currently have some flaky tests, newly failing tests are expected, but should be reviewed to make sure that

  • The number of failures did not increase significantly.
  • All failures that do occur can reasonably be assumed to fail for a different reason than the changes.