Skip to main content

A radical approach to testing ansible content

Project description

tox-ansible

Introduction

tox-ansible is a utility designed to simplify the testing of Ansible content collections.

Implemented as a tox plugin, tox-ansible provides a simple way to test Ansible content collections across multiple Python interpreters and Ansible versions.

tox-ansible uses familiar python testing tools to perform the actual testing. It uses tox to create and manage the testing environments, ansible-test sanity to run the sanity tests, and pytest to run the unit and integration tests. This eliminated the black box nature of other approaches and allowed for more control over the testing process.

When used on a local development system, each of the environments are left intact after a test run. This allows for easy debugging of failed tests for a given test type, python interpreter and Ansible version.

By using tox to create and manage the testing environments, Test outcomes should always be the same on a local development system as they are in a CI/CD pipeline.

tox virtual environments are created in the .tox directory. These are easily deleted and recreated if needed.

Installation

Install from pypi:

pip install tox-ansible

Usage

From the root of your collection, create an empty tox-ansible.ini file and list the available environments:

touch tox-ansible.ini
tox list --ansible --conf tox-ansible.ini

A list of dynamically generated Ansible environments will be displayed:


default environments:
...
integration-py3.11-2.14      -> Integration tests for ansible.scm using ansible-core 2.14 and python 3.11
integration-py3.11-devel     -> Integration tests for ansible.scm using ansible-core devel and python 3.11
integration-py3.11-milestone -> Integration tests for ansible.scm using ansible-core milestone and python 3.11
...
sanity-py3.11-2.14           -> Sanity tests for ansible.scm using ansible-core 2.14 and python 3.11
sanity-py3.11-devel          -> Sanity tests for ansible.scm using ansible-core devel and python 3.11
sanity-py3.11-milestone      -> Sanity tests for ansible.scm using ansible-core milestone and python 3.11
...
unit-py3.11-2.14             -> Unit tests for ansible.scm using ansible-core 2.14 and python 3.11
unit-py3.11-devel            -> Unit tests for ansible.scm using ansible-core devel and python 3.11
unit-py3.11-milestone        -> Unit tests for ansible.scm using ansible-core milestone and python 3.11

These represent the available testing environments. Each denotes the type of tests that will be run, the Python interpreter used to run the tests, and the Ansible version used to run the tests.

To run tests with a single environment, simply run the following command:

tox -e sanity-py3.11-2.14 --ansible --conf tox-ansible.ini

To run tests with multiple environments, simply add the environment names to the command:

tox -e sanity-py3.11-2.14,unit-py3.11-2.14 --ansible --conf tox-ansible.ini

To run all tests of a specific type in all available environments, use the factor -f flag:

tox -f unit --ansible -p auto --conf tox-ansible.ini

To run all tests across all available environments:

tox --ansible -p auto --conf tox-ansible.ini

Note: The -p auto flag will run multiple tests in parallel. Note: The specific Python interpreter will need to be pre-installed on your system, e.g.:

sudo dnf install python3.10

To review the specific commands and configuration for each of the integration, sanity, and unit factors:

tox config --ansible --conf tox-ansible.ini

Generate specific GitHub action matrix as per scope mentioned with --matrix-scope:

tox --ansible --gh-matrix --matrix-scope unit --conf tox-ansible.ini

A list of dynamically generated Ansible environments will be displayed specifically for unit tests:

[
  {
    "description": "Unit tests using ansible 2.9 and python 3.8",
    "factors": [
      "unit",
      "py3.8",
      "2.9"
    ],
    "name": "unit-py3.8-2.9",
    "python": "3.8"
  },
  ...
  {
    "description": "Unit tests using ansible-core milestone and python 3.12",
    "factors": [
      "unit",
      "py3.12",
      "milestone"
    ],
    "name": "unit-py3.12-milestone",
    "python": "3.12"
  }
]

Configuration

tox-ansible should be configured using a tox-ansible.ini file. Using a tox-ansible.ini file allows for the introduction of the tox-ansible plugin to a repository that may already have an existing tox configuration without conflicts. If no configuration overrides are needed, the tox-ansible.ini file may be empty but should be present. In addition to all tox supported keywords the ansible section and skip keyword are available:

# tox-ansible.ini
[ansible]
skip =
    2.9
    devel

This will skip tests in any environment that uses Ansible 2.9 or the devel branch. The list of strings is used for a simple string in string comparison of environment names. Here is the guide to override tox-ansible environment configuration.

Release process

tox-ansible is released with CalVer scheme version numbers. The particular scheme we are using is YY.MM.MICRO, meaning that a release in March 2025 will be named 25.3.0, and if a patch (ie, non-feature) release is required for that release, it will be named 25.3.1, even if it is released in April. The month will not increment until a new version with features or other significant changes is released. More details about calver release process can be seen here.

Note to version 1.x users

Users of tox-ansible v1 should use the stable/1.x branch because the default branch is a rewrite of the plugin for tox 4.0+ which is not backward compatible with the old plugin.

Version 1 of the plugin had native support for molecule. Please see the "Running molecule scenarios" above for an alternative approach.

License

MIT

Project details


Download files

Download the file for your platform. If you're not sure which to choose, learn more about installing packages.

Source Distribution

tox_ansible-24.8.0.tar.gz (38.5 kB view details)

Uploaded Source

Built Distribution

tox_ansible-24.8.0-py3-none-any.whl (10.2 kB view details)

Uploaded Python 3

File details

Details for the file tox_ansible-24.8.0.tar.gz.

File metadata

  • Download URL: tox_ansible-24.8.0.tar.gz
  • Upload date:
  • Size: 38.5 kB
  • Tags: Source
  • Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? Yes
  • Uploaded via: twine/5.1.0 CPython/3.12.5

File hashes

Hashes for tox_ansible-24.8.0.tar.gz
Algorithm Hash digest
SHA256 3210cd82d2465f55573f46068d11bb0dc77cf62b432234c9be43e5121176ad7c
MD5 55d8eb4c2c085bfb95be58f3cd9e02ec
BLAKE2b-256 78f50a841185c4bef7b8f87ccd51c0eb00e090a2c494b3ef2dc7213fac83974d

See more details on using hashes here.

File details

Details for the file tox_ansible-24.8.0-py3-none-any.whl.

File metadata

  • Download URL: tox_ansible-24.8.0-py3-none-any.whl
  • Upload date:
  • Size: 10.2 kB
  • Tags: Python 3
  • Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? Yes
  • Uploaded via: twine/5.1.0 CPython/3.12.5

File hashes

Hashes for tox_ansible-24.8.0-py3-none-any.whl
Algorithm Hash digest
SHA256 4b57e445a1efb65642fe60e3632faa0848b86cc8be0289f696f8c9349c1348b0
MD5 326c02c09f5bbb9c7151ef1c84c9aa76
BLAKE2b-256 0ca76e5c8a31a1a82092a5b535b17dac51553ff249d1d4b54b77d736008de252

See more details on using hashes here.

Supported by

AWS AWS Cloud computing and Security Sponsor Datadog Datadog Monitoring Fastly Fastly CDN Google Google Download Analytics Microsoft Microsoft PSF Sponsor Pingdom Pingdom Monitoring Sentry Sentry Error logging StatusPage StatusPage Status page