avocado-framework/avocado

===============
99.0 The Chosen
===============

The Avocado team is proud to present another release: Avocado 99.0,
AKA "The Chosen", is now available!

Release documentation: `Avocado 99.0
<http://avocado-framework.readthedocs.io/en/99.0/>`_

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

* Ansible modules can now be used as dependencies.  For instance,
  instead of asking test writers to write code to say, create user
  accounts that will be used during a test, a developer can simply use
  ansible's ``user`` module.

  Likewise, if a test needs a service installed or up and running:
  instead of writing all that code, the test writer can describe that
  dependency using the ``service`` ansible module.

* A Podman image can now be treated as a dependency.  This is currently
  mostly useful to tests that will manually create containers, but
  it's expected to also be leveraged by the podman spawner and suite
  and job level dependencies in the near future.

* A new type of plugin, ``Cache``, has been introduced and is
  responsible for manipulating with cache, and it's representation
  through the Avocado interface. It is currently implemented for
  the ``vmimage`` and ``requirements`` cache.

* All nrunner functionality that is activated through the command line
  by means of an option like ``--nrunner-`` are deprecated.  Options
  without the ``--nrunner-`` prefix are already available.  In the
  next Avocado version, only the command line options without the
  ``--nrunner`` prefix will be available.  The same deprecation was
  applied to the ``--test-runner`` option, and users are encouraged
  to use ``--suite-runner`` instead.

* Updates to the nrunner documentation, fixing a number of outdated
  and incorrect information.

Bug Fixes
=========

* A problem caused by times when a test is interrupted by timeout
  before it even starts has been fixed.

* Under specific versions of podman, when querying for information on
  the available containers, while other container operations are running
  will result in a "Failed getting information about container" error.
  A workaround for that behavior has been applied.

* The HTML report now contains an "ALL" selection for test types,
  instead of an empty value.

* :func:`avocado.utils.data_factory.make_dir_and_populate` would crash
  because it used a string instead of bytes when writing to files.

* :func:`avocado.utils.software_manager.backends.dpkg.list_files`
  assumed having a string instead of bytes when splitting lines.

* The independence of ``--nrunner-status-server-uri``
  and ``--nrunner-status-server-listen`` was not being respected.
  Because Tasks are being created with whatever is the current status
  server URI (either determined automatically, or with the "listen"
  config), the "uri" config went unused.  These issues are now fixed.

* A situation where the ``PYTHONPATH`` environment variable would grow
  for each test executed was fixed.

* A major performance regression has been fixed, under which a
  :class:`avocado.core.nrunner.runnable.Runnable` instantiation would
  many times imply the execution of an ``avocado-runner-$kind``
  command, was fixed.

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

* Testing for s390x and ppc64le were migrated from Travis-CI to Packit
  (which runs tests during the package builds) because of reliability
  issues.

* Some nrunner related tests that were dropped because of the input
  URI format for unittests changed, were adapted and reintroduced
  because they are valid in covering some functionality.

* The "exec-like" runners (``exec-test``, ``tap``, ``golang`` and
  ``robot``) were all refactored and now share a lot more code.

* Some skip conditions for tests related to ``iso9660`` and ``disk``
  (because of issues in other projects and CI limitations) have been
  lifted.

* The static syntax checks, based on ``black``, will now print the
  differences and use color output.

* The version of macOS used on GitHub Actions was bumped from
  ``macos-10.15`` to ``macos-11``.

---

For more information, please check out the complete
`Avocado changelog
<https://github.com/avocado-framework/avocado/compare/98.0...99.0>`_.