avocado-framework/avocado

==============================
43.0 The Emperor and the Golem
==============================

The Avocado team is proud to present another release: Avocado version
43.0, aka, "The Emperor and the Golem", is now available!

Release documentation: `Avocado 43.0
<http://avocado-framework.readthedocs.io/en/43.0/>`_

The major changes introduced on this version are listed below,
roughly categorized into major topics and intended audience:

Users/Test Writers
==================

 * The ``--remote-no-copy`` option has been removed.  The reason is
   that the copying of tests to the remote hosts (as set with
   ``--remote-hostname``) was also removed.  That feature, while
   useful to some, had a lot of corner cases.  Instead of keeping a
   feature with a lot of known caveats, it was decided that users
   should setup the remote machines so that tests are available before
   Avocado attempts to run them.

 * The :mod:`avocado.utils.process` library, one of the most complex
   pieces of utility code that Avocado ships, now makes it possible to
   ignore background processes that never finish (while Avocado is
   reading from their file descriptors to properly return their output
   to the caller).  The reason for such a feature is that if a command
   spawn many processes, specially daemon-like ones that never finish,
   the :func:`avocado.utils.process.run` function would hang
   indefinitely.  Since waiting for all the children processes to
   finish is the right thing to do, users need to set the
   ``ignore_bg_processes`` parameter to ``True`` to request this newly
   added behavior.

 * When discovering tests on a directory, that is, when running
   ``avocado list /path/to/tests/directory`` or ``avocado run
   /path/to/tests/directory``, Avocado would return tests in a non
   predictable way, based on :func:`os.walk`.  Now, the result is a
   properly alphabetically ordered list of tests.

 * The ZIP Archive feature (AKA as ``--archive`` or ``-z``) feature,
   which allows to archive job results is now a proper plugin.

 * Plugins can now be setup to run at a specific order.  This is a
   response to a user issue/request, where the ``--archive`` feature
   would run before some other results would be generated.  This
   feature is not limited to plugins of type `result`.  It allows
   any ordering on the enabled set of plugins of a given plugin type.

 * A contrib script that looks for a job result directory based on a
   partial (or complete) job ID is now available at
   ``contrib/scripts/avocado-get-job-results-dir.py``.  This should be
   useful inside automation scripts or even for interactive users.

Documentation
=============

 * Users landing on http://avocado-framework.readthedocs.io would
   previously be redirect to the "latest" documentation, which tracks
   the development master branch.  This could be confusing since the
   page titles would contain a version notice with the latest
   *released* version.  Users will now be redirected by default to the
   latest *released* version, matching the page title, although the
   version tracking the master branch will still be available at the
   http://avocado-framework.readthedocs.io/en/latest URL.

Bugfixes
========

 * During the previous development cycle, a bug where ``journalctl``
   would receive `KeyboardInterrupt` received an workaround by using
   the :mod:`subprocess` library instead of Avocado's own
   :mod:`avocado.utils.process`, which was missing a default handler
   for `SIGINT`.  With the misbehavior of Avocado's library now
   properly addressed, and consequently, we've reverted the workaround
   applied previously.

 * The TAP plugin would fail at the `end_test` event with certain
   inputs.  This has now been fixed, and in the event of errors, a
   better error message will be presented.

Internal improvements
=====================

 * The ``test_utils_partition.py`` selftest module now makes use of
   the :func:`avocado.core.utils.process.can_sudo` function, and will
   only be run when the user is either running as root or has sudo
   correctly configured.

 * Avocado itself preaches that tests should not attempt to skip
   themselves during their own execution.  The idea is that, once a
   test started executing, you can't say it wasn't executed (skipped).
   This is actually enforced in :class:`avocado.Test` based tests.
   But since Avocado's own selftests are based on
   :class:`unittest.TestCase`, some of them were using skip at the
   "wrong" place. This is now fixed.

 * The :class:`avocado.core.job.Job` class received changes that make
   it more closer to be usable as a formally announced and supported
   API.  This is another set of changes towards the so-called "Job
   API" support.

 * There is now a new plugin type, named `result_events`.  This
   replaces the previous implementation that used
   :class:`avocado.core.result.Result` as a base class.  There's now a
   single :class:`avocado.core.result.Result` instance in a given job,
   which tracks the results, while the plugins that act on result
   events (such as test has started, test has finished, etc) are based
   on the :class:`avocado.core.plugins_interfaces.ResultEvents`.

 * A new ``result_events`` plugin called ``human`` now replaces the
   old `HumanResult` implementation.

 * Ported versions of the TAP and journal plugins to the new
   ``result_events`` plugin type.

For more information, please check out the complete
`Avocado changelog
<https://github.com/avocado-framework/avocado/compare/42.0...43.0>`_.

Release Meeting
===============

The Avocado release meetings are now open to the community via
Hangouts on Air.  The meetings are recorded and made available on the
`Avocado Test Framework YouTube channel
<https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-RVZ_HFTbEztDM7wNY4NfA>`_.

For this release, you can watch the meeting on `this link
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D746rSbuecc>`_.

----

| Sprint theme: https://trello.com/c/r2fwf66S/853-sprint-theme-the-emperor-and-the-golem-1952