A few quick tips to get started contributing to OnosSystemTest:

1) Subscribe to the Testing mailing list <onos-test@onosproject.org>. All mailing lists can be found here.

2) Sign up for an account on onosproject.org so as to be able to commit test codes to gerrit.onosproject.org.

3) If you are not familiar with Gerrit workflow, check out this tutorial: Gerrit Workflow for System Test Development.

4) Learn about the TestON Framework for authoring test cases here: OnosSystemTest/TestON Tutorial

Fundamentals on authoring a test case

Because we are targeting all tests to be automated in a Continuous Integration (CI) environment, there are several fundamental principles that we adhere to when writing test cases and driver files:

1. Portability - allow the test case to be run in other similar test environments, as well as merging community contributed tests into our production environment.
2. Stability - the test must handle various environment (e.g. response time of starting ONOS on VMs vs. on Bare Metals); test case must have stability in passing or failing results;
3. Clarity - strive to make Python cases simple to comprehend;
4. Debugging - use logging capabilities liberally to catch all cases of exceptions, and to ensure test failures don't go silently.

In order to achieve these objectives, it is essential to have a good understanding of the Jenkins - TestON interactions and abstractions in running a test case. The following diagram illustrates the interaction and abstraction of TestON and Jenkins.

TestON Scripting General Guidelines:

• Pre-requisites and testbed environment setting - should be set manually, and/or with CI framework (i.e. through Jenkins jobs):
  • First Time Setup:
    1. TestStations:
       • should have a root account of "sdn" (password: rocks) to run TestON cli (so all hosts in the test infrastructure has the same sdn/rocks credential)
       • should be able to login to all nodes specified in the cell. See this guide to setup ssh keys.
    2. "ONOS Bench" and cells: set up per "ONOS from Scratch"
    3. Mininet (OCN) host: set up per  "Mininet Walkthrough"
       Note: it is possible to run "TestStation", "onos Bench" and "Mininet" on the same host, with .topo file set up accordingly.
  • General Steps:
    1. Clean up TestON and Mininet before each test run.
    2. Set OnosSystemTest version, and update OnosSystemTest by typing: "git pull OnosSystemTest" from gerrit.onosproject.org.
    3. Set ONOS version, and update ONOS by typing: "git pull onos" from gerrit.onosproject.org.
    4. Compile/Build ONOS.
    5. Set up ONOS Java Virtual Machine (JVM) related configurations if the default configuration is not desirable.
    6. Run test cases.  See scripting guidelines below.
  • Optional:
    1. Run post-test tasks, such as:
       • Data storage
       • Result publishing
    2. Teardown by uninstalling ONOS and cleaning up Mininet.
       
       
• OnosSystemTest/TestON Script should perform in:
  
  1. Test suite naming, see Test Plans.
  2. README file
     • Should describe the test topology to run the default test case.
     • Should explain the main goal of the test
     • Provide any additional requirements needed to run the test
  3. testname.params
     • Use environment variable names to reference to components - no static IP's
     • Move any hardcoded values to this file - e.g. sleep times, counters, file names... etc.
     • If any modifications need to be made to the test, it should be done in this file
  4. testname.topo
     • Use environment variable names to reference to components - no static IP's;
       
     • Leave out any passwords for the login information - Password-less login should be setup
  5. testname.py
     • Log ONOS version/commit.
     • Set prompt, terminal type
     • Handle test case dependencies
     • Explicit ONOS cell creation and setting
     • Explicit activation of bundles/apps
     • Test case specific app configurations for non-default values - cell apps should be specified in the params file
     • Test dependencies, Mininet topologies, and helper functions should be stored in the Dependency directory located in the test directory.
     • Test log should log the relevant config information - Log is cheap; be as verbose as possible to help the debugging process
     • Avoid static reference to paths, files - put any static references in the .params file
     • Check and log summary of onos exceptions, errors, warnings - Ideally, this should be done after each test case
     • Handling of Test results - write to test log and /tmp file for post-test processing purposes - Try to assert on every test result so that it can be shown on the wiki