Re: [RFC PATCH 0/8] Convert avocado tests to normal Python unittests

[Fabiano Rosas]

Thomas Huth <thuth@redhat.com> writes:

> The Avocado v88 that we use in QEMU is already on a life support
> system: It is not supported by upstream anymore, and with the latest
> versions of Python, it won't work anymore since it depends on the
> "imp" module that has been removed in Python 3.12.
>
> There have been several attempts to update the test suite in QEMU
> to a newer version of Avocado, but so far no attempt has successfully
> been merged yet.
>
> Additionally, the whole "make check" test suite in QEMU is using the
> meson test runner nowadays, so running the python-based tests via the
> Avocodo test runner looks and feels quite like an oddball, requiring
> the users to deal with the knowledge of multiple test runners in
> parallel.
>
> So instead of trying to update the python-based test suite in QEMU
> to a newer version of Avocado, we should maybe try to better integrate
> it with the meson test runner instead. Indeed most tests work quite
> nicely without the Avocado framework already, as you can see with
> this patch series - it does not convert all tests, just a subset since
> it is just an RFC so far, but as you can see, many tests only need
> small modifications to work without Avocado.
>
> If you want to try it: Apply the patches, make sure that you have the
> "pytest" program installed, then recompile and then run:
>
>  make check-pytest
>
> Things that need further attention though:
>
> - All tests that use the LinuxTest / LinuxDistro classes (e.g. based
>   on cloud-init images) really depend on the Avocado framework,
>   thus we'd need a solution for those if we want to continue with
>   this approach
>
> - Same for all tests that require the LinuxSSHMixIn class - we'd
>   need to provide a solution for ssh-based tests, too.

These two seem to be dependent mostly avocado/utils only. Those could
still be used without the whole framework, no? Say we keep importing
avocado.utils, but run everything from meson, would that make sense?