GitLab QA orchestrator
Definitions
- GitLab QA framework: A framework that allows developers to write end-to-end
tests simply and efficiently.
Located at
gitlab-org/gitlab-ce@qa/qa/
. - GitLab QA instance-level scenarios: RSpec scenarios that use the
GitLab QA framework and Capybara to setup and perform individual end-to-end
tests against a live GitLab instance.
Located at
gitlab-org/gitlab-ce@qa/qa/specs/features/
. - GitLab QA orchestrator (this project): An orchestration tool that enables running various QA test suites in a simple manner.
- GitLab QA orchestrated scenarios: Scenarios where containers are started,
configured, and execute instance-level scenarios against a running GitLab
instance.
Located at
gitlab-org/gitlab-qa@lib/gitlab/qa/scenario/test/
.
Goals and objectives
GitLab consists of multiple pieces configured and packaged by GitLab Omnibus.
The purpose of the QA end-to-end test suite is to verify that all pieces integrate well together.
Testing changes in merge requests before the merge
The ultimate goal is to make it possible to run the QA test suite for any
merge request, even before merging code into the master
branch.
We can run tests against any instance of GitLab
GitLab QA is a click-driven, black-box testing tool. We also use it to run tests against the staging environment, and we strive to make it useful for our users as well.
GitLab QA tests running in the CI/CD environment
Manual steps should not be needed to run the QA test suite. GitLab QA orchestrator is CI/CD environment native, which means that we should add new features and tests when we are comfortable with running new code in the CI/CD environment.
GitLab QA test failures are reproducible locally
Despite the fact that GitLab QA orchestrator has been built to run in the CI/CD environment, it is really important to make it easy for developers to reproduce test failures locally. It is much easier to debug things locally, than in the CI/CD environment.
To make it easier to reproduce test failures locally we have published the
gitlab-qa
gem on rubygems.org and we
are using exactly the same approach to run tests in the CI/CD environment.
It means that using the gitlab-qa
CLI tool, which orchestrates the test
environment and runs the GitLab QA test suite, is a reproducible way of running
tests locally and in the CI/CD environment.
It also means that we cannot have custom code in .gitlab-ci.yml
to, for
example, start new containers / services.
Test the installation / deployment process too
We distribute GitLab in a package (like a Debian package or a Docker image) so we want to test the installation process to ensure that our package is not broken.
But we are also working on making GitLab be a cloud native product. This means that, for example, using Helm becomes yet another installation / deployment process that we want to test with GitLab QA.
Considering our goal of being able to test all changes in merge requests, it is especially important to be able to test our Kubernetes deployments, as that is essential to scaling our test environments to efficiently handle a large number of tests.
Documentation
All the documentation can be found under docs/
.
How do we use it
Currently, we execute the test suite against GitLab Docker images created by Omnibus nightly via a pipeline in the nightly project.
We also execute the test suite nightly against our staging environment via a pipeline in the staging project.
Finally, we trigger GitLab QA pipelines whenever someone clicks package-and-qa
manual
action in a merge request.
How can you use it
The GitLab QA tool is published as a Ruby Gem.
You can install it with gem install gitlab-qa
. It will expose a gitlab-qa
command in your system.
If you want to run the scenarios against your GDK and/or develop them on Mac OS, please read Run QA tests against your GDK setup as there are caveats and things that may work differently.
All the scenarios you can run are described in the What tests can be run? documentation.
Note: The GitLab QA tool requires that Docker is installed.
How to add new scenarios
Scenarios (test cases) and scripts to run them are located in the
CE and
EE
repositories under the qa/
directory, so please also check the documentation
there.
Contributing
Please see the contribution guidelines.