Running the tests

Against your GDK environment

First, follow the instructions to install GDK as your local GitLab development environment.

Then, navigate to the QA folder, install the gems, and run the tests via RSpec: 

cd gitlab-development-kit/gitlab/qa
bundle install
bundle exec rspec <path/to/spec.rb>
note
  • If you want to run tests requiring SSH against GDK, you will need to modify your GDK setup.
  • If this is your first time running GDK, you can use the password pre-set for root. See supported GitLab environment variables. If you have changed your root password, export the password as GITLAB_INITIAL_ROOT_PASSWORD.
  • By default the tests will run in a headless browser. If you’d like to watch the test execution, you can export WEBDRIVER_HEADLESS=false.
  • Tests that are tagged :orchestrated require special setup (e.g., custom GitLab configuration, or additional services such as LDAP). All orchestrated tests can be run via gitlab-qa. There are also setup instructions for running some of those tests against GDK or another local GitLab instance.

Remote development

For VSCode user, .devcontainer defines configuration to develop E2E tests inside a Docker container which by default is attached to the same network as environments started by gitlab-qa gem. For more information on how to use dev containers, see tutorial.

This is useful when developing E2E tests that require GitLab instance with specific omnibus configuration. Typical workflow example:

  • Start GitLab omnibus instance with specific configuration without running tests, for example: gitlab-qa Test::Integration::Import EE --no-tests. For available configurations, see docs
  • Start dev container from VSCode environment
  • Develop and run tests from within the container which will automatically execute against started GitLab instance

Generic command for a typical GDK installation

The following is an example command you can use if you have configured GDK to run on a specific IP address and port, with a username, password, and personal access token that aren’t the defaults, and you would like the test framework to show debug logs: 

GITLAB_QA_ACCESS_TOKEN={GDK API PAT} \
GITLAB_USERNAME={GDK USERNAME} \
GITLAB_PASSWORD={GDK PASSWORD} \
QA_LOG_LEVEL=DEBUG \
QA_GITLAB_URL="http://{GDK IP ADDRESS}:{GDK PORT}" \
bundle exec rspec <path/to/spec.rb>

For an explanation of the variables see the additional examples below and the list of supported environment variables.

Against GitLab in Docker

GitLab can be installed in Docker.

See the section above for situations that might require adjustment to the commands below or to the configuration of the GitLab instance. You can find more information in the documentation.

On a Unix like operating system

  1. Use the following command to start an instance that you can visit at http://127.0.0.1: 

    docker run \
 --hostname 127.0.0.1 \
 --publish 80:80 --publish 22:22 \
 --name gitlab \
 --shm-size 256m \
 --env GITLAB_OMNIBUS_CONFIG="gitlab_rails['initial_root_password']='5iveL\!fe';" \
 gitlab/gitlab-ee:nightly
note
If you are on a Mac with Apple Silicon, you will also need to add: --platform=linux/amd64

  1. Once GitLab is up and accessible on http://127.0.0.1, in another shell tab, navigate to the qa directory of the checkout of the GitLab repository on your computer and run the following commands. 

    bundle install
export WEBDRIVER_HEADLESS=false
export GITLAB_INITIAL_ROOT_PASSWORD=5iveL\!fe
export QA_GITLAB_URL="http://127.0.0.1"

  2. Most tests that do not require special setup could then be run with the following command. We will run log_in_spec.rb in this example. 

    bundle exec rspec ./qa/specs/features/browser_ui/1_manage/login/log_in_spec.rb

On a Windows PC

  1. If you don’t already have these, install:

  2. Use the following command to start an instance that you can visit at http://127.0.0.1. You might need to grant admin rights if asked: 

    docker run --hostname 127.0.0.1 --publish 80:80 --publish 22:22 --name gitlab --shm-size 256m --env GITLAB_OMNIBUS_CONFIG="gitlab_rails['initial_root_password']='5iveL\!fe';" gitlab/gitlab-ee:nightly

  3. Once GitLab is up and accessible on http://127.0.0.1, in another command prompt window, navigate to the qa directory of the checkout of the GitLab repository on your computer and run the following commands. 

    bundle install
set WEBDRIVER_HEADLESS=false
set GITLAB_INITIAL_ROOT_PASSWORD=5iveL\!fe
set QA_GITLAB_URL=http://127.0.0.1

  4. Most tests that do not require special setup could then be run with the following command. We will run log_in_spec.rb in this example. 

    bundle exec rspec .\qa\specs\features\browser_ui\1_manage\login\log_in_spec.rb

Specific types of tests

You can supply specific tests to run as another parameter. For example, to run the repository-related specs, you can execute: 

bundle exec rspec qa/specs/features/browser_ui/3_create/repository

EE tests

When running EE tests you’ll need to have a license available. GitLab engineers can request a license.

Once you have the license file you can export it as an environment variable and then the framework can use it. If you do so it will be installed automatically. 

export QA_EE_LICENSE=$(cat /path/to/gitlab_license)

Transient bugs

A suite of tests have been written to test for transient bugs. Those tests are tagged :transient and therefore can be run via: 

bundle exec rspec --tag transient

Quarantined tests

Tests can be put in quarantine by assigning :quarantine metadata. This means they will be skipped unless run with --tag quarantine. This can be used for tests that are expected to fail while a fix is in progress (similar to how skip or pending can be used). 

bundle exec rspec --tag quarantine

Custom bin/qa test runner

bin/qa is an additional custom wrapper script that abstracts away some of the more complicated setups that some tests require. This option requires test scenario and test instance’s GitLab address to be specified in the command. For example, to run any Instance scenario test, the following command can be used: 

bundle exec bin/qa Test::Instance::All http://localhost:3000

Feature flags

Tests can be run with a feature flag enabled or disabled by using the command-line option --enable-feature FEATURE_FLAG or --disable-feature FEATURE_FLAG.

For example, to enable the feature flag that enforces Gitaly request limits, you would use the command: 

bundle exec bin/qa Test::Instance::All http://localhost:3000 --enable-feature gitaly_enforce_requests_limits

This will instruct the QA framework to enable the gitaly_enforce_requests_limits feature flag (via the API), run all the tests in the Test::Instance::All scenario, and then disable the feature flag again.

Similarly, to disable the feature flag that enforces Gitaly request limits, you would use the command: 

bundle exec bin/qa Test::Instance::All http://localhost:3000 --disable-feature gitaly_enforce_requests_limits

This will instruct the QA framework to disable the gitaly_enforce_requests_limits feature flag (via the API) if not already disabled, run all the tests in the Test::Instance::All scenario, and then enable the feature flag again if it was enabled earlier.

Note also that the -- separator isn’t used because --enable-feature and --disable-feature are QA framework options, not rspec options.

Test configuration

Overriding GitLab address

When running tests against GDK, the default address is http://127.0.0.1:3000. This value can be overridden by providing environment variable QA_GITLAB_URL: 

QA_GITLAB_URL=https://gdk.test:3000 bundle exec rspec

Overriding the authenticated user

Unless told otherwise, the QA tests will run as the default root user seeded by the GDK.

If you need to authenticate as a different user, you can provide the GITLAB_USERNAME and GITLAB_PASSWORD environment variables: 

GITLAB_USERNAME=jsmith GITLAB_PASSWORD=password bundle exec rspec

Some QA tests require logging in as an administrator. By default, the QA tests will use the same root user seeded by the GDK.

If you need to authenticate with different admin credentials, you can provide the GITLAB_ADMIN_USERNAME and GITLAB_ADMIN_PASSWORD environment variables: 

GITLAB_ADMIN_USERNAME=admin GITLAB_ADMIN_PASSWORD=myadminpassword GITLAB_USERNAME=jsmith GITLAB_PASSWORD=password bundle exec rspec

If your user doesn’t have permission to default sandbox group gitlab-qa-sandbox, you could also use another sandbox group by giving GITLAB_SANDBOX_NAME: 

GITLAB_USERNAME=jsmith GITLAB_PASSWORD=password GITLAB_SANDBOX_NAME=jsmith-qa-sandbox bundle exec rspec

All supported environment variables are here.

Sending additional cookies

The environment variable QA_COOKIES can be set to send additional cookies on every request. This is necessary on gitlab.com to direct traffic to the canary fleet. To do this set QA_COOKIES="gitlab_canary=true".

To set multiple cookies, separate them with the ; character, for example: QA_COOKIES="cookie1=value;cookie2=value2"

Headless browser

By default tests use headless browser. To override that, WEBDRIVER_HEADLESS must be set to false: 

WEBDRIVER_HEADLESS=false bundle exec rspec

Log level

By default, the tests use the info log level. To change the test’s log level, the environment variable QA_LOG_LEVEL can be set: 

QA_LOG_LEVEL=debug bundle exec rspec