TESTING.md

Testing aleph-vm

This procedure describes how to run tests on a dev system. See the dev setup section of the README first.

Tests also run on GitHub Actions via the following workflow.

Since these tests create block devices and manipulate network interfaces, they need to run as root. If you are not comfortable with this, run them in a virtual machine.

1. Clone this repository

git clone https://github.com/aleph-im/aleph-vm.git

2. Install hatch, the project manager

Since installing tools globally is not recommended, we will install hatch in a dedicated virtual environment. Alternatives include using pipx or your distribution.

python3 -m venv /opt/venv
source /opt/venv/bin/activate

# Inside the venv
pip install hatch

3. Initialize hatch for running the tests

It is required that the testing virtual environment relies on system packages for nftables instead of the package obtained from salsa.debian.org as defined in pyproject.toml.

Create the testing virtual environment:

hatch env create testing

4. Run tests

hatch run testing:test

Debugging the tests

Some tricks and options that might help debugging problematic tests.

Only launch pytest with a test name and more verbose debugging

hatch run testing:pytest -vv --log-level=DEBUG --full-trace -o log_cli=true -k <TEST NAME>

Specify --capture=no to pytest so it launch. This way you get the full output, including firecracker logs

Debugging runtimes

If the error is in the runtime: Modify the #! to pass the -v option to python, which will print all the debugging info #!/usr/bin/python3 -vOO

To have these modification take effect you need to rebuild the runtime file using create_disk_image.sh as root

sudo bash create_disk_image.sh

Don't forget to have the print system log option set ALEPH_VM_PRINT_SYSTEM_LOGS=1

aleph-debian-12-python is used in test_create_execution