runner-readme.md

Kola Runner

Table of Contents

• General Function Overview
• Visual Function Flow
• Detailed Workflow
• Common Closures
• Logging

The kola runner is very similar to the standard go test runner with some modifications to allow tighter control over the run loop and extensibility for logging (without parsing) & output control.

General Function Overview

kola/harness

kola/harness: RunTests

Responsible for filtering down the test list based on the given criteria, creating the harness/suite: Suite object, and outputting the final result.

kola/harness: runTest

Creates the test cluster, runs the individual test function, and cleans up the test cluster.

harness/suite

harness/suite: Run

Creates the output directory, the test.tap file and any profile related files then calls harness/suite: runTests.

harness/suite: runTests

Sets up the harness/harness: H object and calls harness/harness: tRunner with a closure to call harness/harness: Run for each test.

harness/harness

harness/harness: tRunner

Responsible for the timing, reporting, and execution of a closure.

harness/harness: Run

Handles the setup of child harness/harness: H objects, loggers, and the running of closures as subtests.

Visual Function Flow

The first 4 steps handle filtering down the test list, creating the clusters, and building the suite. The next 4 set up the reporting structure of the test group and run the child tests. The following 2 get ready to run each individual test. And the final step runs the actual test function registered in the test.

cmd/kola/kola
      |
      v
kola/harness: RunTests
      |
      v
harness/suite: Run
      |
      v
harness/suite: runTests
      |
      v
harness/harness: tRunner
      |
      v
harness/harness: Run
      |
      v
harness/harness: tRunner
      |
      v
kola/harness: runTest
      |
      v
harness/harness: Run
      |
      v
harness/harness: tRunner
      |
      v
kola/register/register: Run

Detailed Workflow

1. The kola cmd calls into kola/harness: RunTests
2. kola/harness: RunTests calls kola/harness: filterTests to build a test list filtered down by the given pattern & platform from all tests in kola/register/register: Tests object.
3. kola/harness: RunTests checks if any of the tests do not exactly match the given pattern and have either a MinVersion or MaxVersion tag, if so then it will call kola/harness: getClusterSemver to spin up a machine on the given platform to extract the OS semver. The tests will then be filtered down again with the semver. Note that if a pattern matches an individual test the kola/harness: getClusterSemver check will be skipped and the test will be run without regard to the MinVersion or MaxVersion tags.
4. kola/harness: RunTests will then construct a harness/suite: Options object and construct a harness/test: Test object containing the name of each test and a closure (#1) calling kola/harness: runTest.
5. kola/harness: RunTests constructs a harness/suite: Suite object via harness/suite: NewSuite using the harness/suite: Options and harness/test: Test objects and proceeds to call the harness/suite: Run function on the harness/suite: Suite object.
6. harness/suite: Run starts by creating or cleaning up the output directory by calling the harness/harness: CleanOutputDir function. It then creates the test.tap file inside of the output directory and prints a string to the file containing 1..%d where %d is the amount of tests being run.
7. harness/suite: Run then checks if the following options were selected and if so creates the corresponding files in the output path:

Option	Filename
MemProfile	mem.prof
BlockProfile	block.prof
CpuProfile	cpu.prof
ExecutionTrace	exec.trace

8. harness/suite: Run then calls harness/suite: runTests passing os.Stdout and the tap io.Writer object.
9. harness/suite: runTests starts by setting the running variable on the harness/suite: Suite object, which is the count of running tests, to 1 and creating the harness/harness: H object.
10. harness/suite: runTests then calls harness/harness: tRunner passing the harness/harness: H object and a closure (#2) which loops each test in the harness/suite: Suite object calling harness/harness: Run on each, passing the name of the test, the harness/test: Test object, and a boolean pointer set to false, followed by a goroutine call to receive from the signal channel on the harness/harness: H object.
11. harness/harness: tRunner starts by creating a context.WithCancel object, the result of harness/harness: parentContext is passed in which will either be the context object of the harness/harness: H objects parent or context.Background() if the object doesn't have a parent.
12. harness/harness: tRunner then defers a closure which will detect the status of the test run, calculate the ending time, run any subtests, call harness/harness: report (which will flush the test result to the parent via the harness/harness: flushToParent function), and send true on the harness/harness: H signal channel.
13. harness/harness: tRunner will then calculate the start time and call the closure it received as an argument with the harness/harness: H variable as a parameter, this will be the closure that was created in harness/suite: runTests which will call harness/harness: Run for each test.
14. harness/harness: Run runs each function as a subtest of the harness/harness: H object it is passed with the name passed. It starts by marking the hasSub variable on the harness/harness: H object to true and checking that the test name it received is a valid test via the harness/match: fullName function.
15. harness/harness: Run will then create a new harness/harness: H object which has the object it received as the parent and a log object.
16. harness/harness: Run then does a goroutine call on harness/harness: tRunner passing in the new harness/harness: H object, the closure function it was passed, which is the call to kola/harness: runTest, and the boolean pointer it was passed.
17. harness/harness: tRunner will then run through and call kola/harness: runTest.
18. kola/harness: runTest is the harness responsible for running a single test grouping (test groupings tests. It will create the cluster that will be used by the tests, validate that the machines spun up properly, and then call kola/register/register: Run on the kola/register/register: Test object, which is a function pointer which accepts a kola/cluster/cluster: TestCluster object and is defined inside of the individual test files.

Common Closures

1. kola/harness: RunTests

Accepts a harness/harness: H object and calls kola/harness: runTest

func(h *harness.H) {
        runTest(h, []*register.Test{test}, pltfrm, false)
}

2. harness/suite: runTests

Accepts a harness/harness: H object. Loops each test in the harness/suite: Suite object calling harness/harness: Run. This is being pass as an argument to harness/harness: tRunner. harness/harness:tRunner will time the the outer block and call harness/harness: Run which will run the test function as a subtest.

For instance, harness/harness: tRunner will be called with the harness/harness: H object representing the entire test run. It will then execute this closure which will loop through every test and call harness/harness: Run which will run each as a subtest for reporting purposes inside of goroutines.

func(t *H) {
        for name, test := range s.tests {
                t.Run(name, test, util.BoolToPtr(false))
        }
        // Run catching the signal rather than the tRunner as a separate
        // goroutine to avoid adding a goroutine during the sequential
        // phase as this pollutes the stacktrace output when aborting.
        go func() { <-t.signal }()
}

Logging

The kola runner supports custom reporting via the harness/reporters: Reporter interface. By default plain text will be output into stdout and a JSON file will be produced inside of the _kola_temp run log (e.x.: _kola_temp/<platform>-latest/reports/report.json). New output formats can be added by creating a new struct which implements the harness/reporters: Reporter interface and instantiating an object of said reporter inside of the harness: Options object created in kola/harness: RunTests.

For example this is how the JSON reporter is added.