nixpkgs/nixos/doc/manual/development/writing-nixos-tests.xml

<section xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
        xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
        xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
        version="5.0"
        xml:id="sec-writing-nixos-tests">

<title>Writing Tests</title>

<para>A NixOS test is a Nix expression that has the following structure:

<programlisting>
import ./make-test.nix {

  # Either the configuration of a single machine:
  machine =
    { config, pkgs, ... }:
    { <replaceable>configuration…</replaceable>
    };

  # Or a set of machines:
  nodes =
    { <replaceable>machine1</replaceable> =
        { config, pkgs, ... }: { <replaceable>…</replaceable> };
      <replaceable>machine2</replaceable> =
        { config, pkgs, ... }: { <replaceable>…</replaceable> };
      …
    };

  testScript =
    ''
      <replaceable>Perl code…</replaceable>
    '';
}
</programlisting>

The attribute <literal>testScript</literal> is a bit of Perl code that
executes the test (described below). During the test, it will start
one or more virtual machines, the configuration of which is described
by the attribute <literal>machine</literal> (if you need only one
machine in your test) or by the attribute <literal>nodes</literal> (if
you need multiple machines). For instance, <filename
xlink:href="https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/nixos/tests/login.nix">login.nix</filename>
only needs a single machine to test whether users can log in on the
virtual console, whether device ownership is correctly maintained when
switching between consoles, and so on. On the other hand, <filename
xlink:href="https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/nixos/tests/nfs.nix">nfs.nix</filename>,
which tests NFS client and server functionality in the Linux kernel
(including whether locks are maintained across server crashes),
requires three machines: a server and two clients.</para>

<para>There are a few special NixOS configuration options for test
VMs:

<!-- FIXME: would be nice to generate this automatically. -->

<variablelist>

  <varlistentry>
    <term><option>virtualisation.memorySize</option></term>
    <listitem><para>The memory of the VM in
    megabytes.</para></listitem>
  </varlistentry>

  <varlistentry>
    <term><option>virtualisation.vlans</option></term>
    <listitem><para>The virtual networks to which the VM is
    connected. See <filename
    xlink:href="https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/nixos/tests/nat.nix">nat.nix</filename>
    for an example.</para></listitem>
  </varlistentry>

  <varlistentry>
    <term><option>virtualisation.writableStore</option></term>
    <listitem><para>By default, the Nix store in the VM is not
    writable. If you enable this option, a writable union file system
    is mounted on top of the Nix store to make it appear
    writable. This is necessary for tests that run Nix operations that
    modify the store.</para></listitem>
  </varlistentry>

</variablelist>

For more options, see the module <filename
xlink:href="https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/nixos/modules/virtualisation/qemu-vm.nix">qemu-vm.nix</filename>.</para>

<para>The test script is a sequence of Perl statements that perform
various actions, such as starting VMs, executing commands in the VMs,
and so on. Each virtual machine is represented as an object stored in
the variable <literal>$<replaceable>name</replaceable></literal>,
where <replaceable>name</replaceable> is the identifier of the machine
(which is just <literal>machine</literal> if you didn’t specify
multiple machines using the <literal>nodes</literal> attribute). For
instance, the following starts the machine, waits until it has
finished booting, then executes a command and checks that the output
is more-or-less correct:

<programlisting>
$machine->start;
$machine->waitForUnit("default.target");
$machine->succeed("uname") =~ /Linux/;
</programlisting>

The first line is actually unnecessary; machines are implicitly
started when you first execute an action on them (such as
<literal>waitForUnit</literal> or <literal>succeed</literal>). If you
have multiple machines, you can speed up the test by starting them in
parallel:

<programlisting>
startAll;
</programlisting>

</para>

<para>The following methods are available on machine objects:

<variablelist>

  <varlistentry>
    <term><methodname>start</methodname></term>
    <listitem><para>Start the virtual machine. This method is
    asynchronous — it does not wait for the machine to finish
    booting.</para></listitem>
  </varlistentry>

  <varlistentry>
    <term><methodname>shutdown</methodname></term>
    <listitem><para>Shut down the machine, waiting for the VM to
    exit.</para></listitem>
  </varlistentry>

  <varlistentry>
    <term><methodname>crash</methodname></term>
    <listitem><para>Simulate a sudden power failure, by telling the VM
    to exit immediately.</para></listitem>
  </varlistentry>

  <varlistentry>
    <term><methodname>block</methodname></term>
    <listitem><para>Simulate unplugging the Ethernet cable that
    connects the machine to the other machines.</para></listitem>
  </varlistentry>

  <varlistentry>
    <term><methodname>unblock</methodname></term>
    <listitem><para>Undo the effect of
    <methodname>block</methodname>.</para></listitem>
  </varlistentry>

  <varlistentry>
    <term><methodname>screenshot</methodname></term>
    <listitem><para>Take a picture of the display of the virtual
    machine, in PNG format. The screenshot is linked from the HTML
    log.</para></listitem>
  </varlistentry>

  <varlistentry>
    <term><methodname>getScreenText</methodname></term>
    <listitem><para>Return a textual representation of what is currently
    visible on the machine's screen using optical character
    recognition.</para>
    <note><para>This requires passing <option>enableOCR</option> to the test
    attribute set.</para></note></listitem>
  </varlistentry>

  <varlistentry>
    <term><methodname>sendMonitorCommand</methodname></term>
    <listitem><para>Send a command to the QEMU monitor. This is rarely
    used, but allows doing stuff such as attaching virtual USB disks
    to a running machine.</para></listitem>
  </varlistentry>

  <varlistentry>
    <term><methodname>sendKeys</methodname></term>
    <listitem><para>Simulate pressing keys on the virtual keyboard,
    e.g., <literal>sendKeys("ctrl-alt-delete")</literal>.</para></listitem>
  </varlistentry>

  <varlistentry>
    <term><methodname>sendChars</methodname></term>
    <listitem><para>Simulate typing a sequence of characters on the
    virtual keyboard, e.g., <literal>sendKeys("foobar\n")</literal>
    will type the string <literal>foobar</literal> followed by the
    Enter key.</para></listitem>
  </varlistentry>

  <varlistentry>
    <term><methodname>execute</methodname></term>
    <listitem><para>Execute a shell command, returning a list
    <literal>(<replaceable>status</replaceable>,
    <replaceable>stdout</replaceable>)</literal>.</para></listitem>
  </varlistentry>

  <varlistentry>
    <term><methodname>succeed</methodname></term>
    <listitem><para>Execute a shell command, raising an exception if
    the exit status is not zero, otherwise returning the standard
    output.</para></listitem>
  </varlistentry>

  <varlistentry>
    <term><methodname>fail</methodname></term>
    <listitem><para>Like <methodname>succeed</methodname>, but raising
    an exception if the command returns a zero status.</para></listitem>
  </varlistentry>

  <varlistentry>
    <term><methodname>waitUntilSucceeds</methodname></term>
    <listitem><para>Repeat a shell command with 1-second intervals
    until it succeeds.</para></listitem>
  </varlistentry>

  <varlistentry>
    <term><methodname>waitUntilFails</methodname></term>
    <listitem><para>Repeat a shell command with 1-second intervals
    until it fails.</para></listitem>
  </varlistentry>

  <varlistentry>
    <term><methodname>waitForUnit</methodname></term>
    <listitem><para>Wait until the specified systemd unit has reached
    the “active” state.</para></listitem>
  </varlistentry>

  <varlistentry>
    <term><methodname>waitForFile</methodname></term>
    <listitem><para>Wait until the specified file
    exists.</para></listitem>
  </varlistentry>

  <varlistentry>
    <term><methodname>waitForOpenPort</methodname></term>
    <listitem><para>Wait until a process is listening on the given TCP
    port (on <literal>localhost</literal>, at least).</para></listitem>
  </varlistentry>

  <varlistentry>
    <term><methodname>waitForClosedPort</methodname></term>
    <listitem><para>Wait until nobody is listening on the given TCP
    port.</para></listitem>
  </varlistentry>

  <varlistentry>
    <term><methodname>waitForX</methodname></term>
    <listitem><para>Wait until the X11 server is accepting
    connections.</para></listitem>
  </varlistentry>

  <varlistentry>
    <term><methodname>waitForText</methodname></term>
    <listitem><para>Wait until the supplied regular expressions matches
    the textual contents of the screen by using optical character recognition
    (see <methodname>getScreenText</methodname>).</para>
    <note><para>This requires passing <option>enableOCR</option> to the test
    attribute set.</para></note></listitem>
  </varlistentry>

  <varlistentry>
    <term><methodname>waitForWindow</methodname></term>
    <listitem><para>Wait until an X11 window has appeared whose name
    matches the given regular expression, e.g.,
    <literal>waitForWindow(qr/Terminal/)</literal>.</para></listitem>
  </varlistentry>

  <varlistentry>
    <term><methodname>copyFileFromHost</methodname></term>
    <listitem><para>Copies a file from host to machine, e.g.,
    <literal>copyFileFromHost("myfile", "/etc/my/important/file")</literal>.</para>
    <para>The first argument is the file on the host. The file needs to be
    accessible while building the nix derivation. The second argument is
    the location of the file on the machine.</para>
    </listitem>
  </varlistentry>

</variablelist>

</para>

</section>