avocado-framework/avocado

====================
91.0 Thelma & Louise
====================

The Avocado team is proud to present another release: Avocado 91.0,
AKA "Thelma & Louise", is now available!

Release documentation: `Avocado 91.0
<http://avocado-framework.readthedocs.io/en/91.0/>`_

Important Announcement
======================

Avocado has switched the default runner, from the implementation most
people currently use (internally simply called ``runner``), to the
newer architecture and implementation called ``nrunner``.

**Users installing and relying on the latest Avocado release will be
impacted by this change and should act accordingly.**

To keep using the current (soon to be legacy) runner, you **must** set
the ``--test-runner=runner`` command line option (or the equivalent
``test_runner`` configuration option, under section ``[run]``).

Known issues are being tracked on our GitHub project page, with the
``nrunner`` tag, and new issue reports are appreciated.

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

* As per the previous section, the ``nrunner`` test runner
  implementation is now the default on every ``avocado run`` command
  (or equivalent Job API scripts).  Since the previous release,
  ``nrunner`` supports:

 1. the "fail fast" (``run --failfast``) feature.

 2. :ref:`the varianter <varianter>` feature.

 3. UNIX domain sockets as the communication channel with runners (the
    new default).

 4. a ``sysinfo`` runner, which will allow for sysinfo collection on
    any supported spawner.

 5. early notification of missing runners for tasks in the requested
    suite.

* The assets plugin fetch command (``avocado assets fetch``) now supports:

 1. fetching assets defined in a Python list in ``INSTRUMENTED`` tests.

 2. setting a timeout for the download of assets.

* Improved checks when users attempt to use the varianter and simple
  parameters (``-p``) at the same time.

* The Podman spawner (``--nrunner-spawner=podman``) will now attempt
  to use a Container image (``--spawner-podman-image=``) that matches
  the host Linux distribution.  If it's not possible to detect the
  host distribution, the latest Fedora image will be used.

Bug Fixes
=========

* The extraction of DEB packages by means of
  :func:`avocado.utils.software_manager.SoftwareManager.extract_from_package`
  was fixed and does not depend on ``ar`` utility anymore (as it now
  uses the :mod:`avocado.utils.ar` module).

* The ``--store-logging-stream`` parameter value was being incorrectly
  parsed as a list of characters. If a ``bar`` value is given, it
  would generate the ``b.INFO``, ``a.INFO``, and ``r.INFO`` file.  The
  fix parses the command line arguments by treating the value as a
  comma separated list (that becomes a set).

* ``nrunner`` will now properly translate reference names with
  absolute paths into Python unittest "dotted names".

* The ``TAP`` parser (:mod:`avocado.core.tapparser`) will not choke on
  unexpected content, ignoring it according to the standard.

* :class:`avocado.core.nrunner.Runnables` created by suites will now
  contain the full suite configuration.

* If a job contains multiple test suites with the same name, and tests
  within those suites also have the same name, test results would be
  overwritten.  Now job name uniqueness is enforced and no test
  results from a suite should be able to overwrite other's.

* Some occurrences of the incorrect ``AVOCADO_TEST_OUTPUT_DIR``
  environment variable name were renamed to the proper name
  (``AVOCADO_TEST_OUTPUTDIR``).

Utility APIs
============

* :class:`avocado.utils.network.interfaces.NetworkInterface` can now
  access and present information on interfaces that do not have an IP
  address assigned to them.

* :mod:`avocado.utils.distro` can now detect the distribution on
  remote machines.

* A new :mod:`avocado.utils.ar` module was introduced that allows
  extraction of UNIX ``ar`` archive contents.

* A new :mod:`avocado.utils.sysinfo` module that powers the
  ``sysinfo`` feature, but is now also accessible to job/test writers.

* Times related to the duration of tasks are now limited to nanosecond
  precision to improve readability.

* The :mod:`avocado.utils.distro` will now correctly return a
  :data:`avocado.utils.distro.UNKNOWN_DISTRO` on non UNIX systems,
  instead of crashing.

* The :mod:`avocado.utils.network.hosts` won't consider anymore
  ``bonding_masters``, a file that may exist at ``/sys/class/net``, as
  the name of an interface.

Misc Changes
============

* Many documentation improvements.

* The ``setup.py`` script received many improvements, including:

 1. A new ``test`` command implementation.

 2. A new ``plugin`` command.

* Various logging related improvements, especially regarding the
  elimination of Python's root logger usage.

Internal Changes
================

* Major improvements to the CI, including:

 1. additional tests for ``setup.py``

 2. most of the "pre-release" test plan was migrated to a CI job

* The :func:`avocado.Test.workdir` is now initialized lazily, which
  prevents never used work directories from being created and kept in
  the test results' directory.

* A circular import condition was fixed related to the Settings
  plugins initialized during avocado early initialization.

* A rename of the ``requirements-selftests.txt`` file to
  ``requirements-dev.txt`` to better capture the fact that the selftests
  requirements are a subset of the requirements needed for development.

* ``selftests/safeloader.sh`` now supports checking a single file.

* Debugging aids were added to the Task/StateMachine/Repo systems of
  the ``nrunner``.  These can be seen by default at the
  ``avocado.core.DEBUG`` file in the job's result directory.

* An ``nrunner`` based job its tasks are now better bound by the job
  ID, with messages being logged in case the status server receives
  messages destined for another job.

* The very long and detailed temporary directory prefix used on
  ``TestCaseTmpDir`` was shortened so that limitations on paths such
  as socket names are not easily hit.

* Clean up of duplicate methods in the
  :class:`avocado.core.loader.FileLoader` class.

---

For more information, please check out the complete
`Avocado changelog
<https://github.com/avocado-framework/avocado/compare/90.0...91.0>`_.