End-to-end test pipelines

e2e:test-on-omnibus child pipeline

The e2e:test-on-omnibus child pipeline is the main executor of E2E testing for the GitLab platform. The pipeline definition has several dynamic components to reduce the number of tests being executed in merge request pipelines.

Setup

Pipeline setup consists of:

  • The e2e-test-pipeline-generate job in the prepare stage of the main GitLab pipeline.
  • The e2e:test-on-omnibus job in the qa stage, which triggers the child pipeline that is responsible for building the omnibus package and running E2E tests.

e2e-test-pipeline-generate

This job consists of two components that implement selective test execution:

  • The detect_changes Rake task determines which e2e specs should be executed in a particular merge request pipeline. This task analyzes changes in a particular merge request and determines which specs must be executed. Based on that, a dry-run of every scenario executes and determines if a scenario contains any executable tests. Selective test execution uses these criteria to determine which specific tests to execute.
  • generate-e2e-pipeline is executed, which generates a child pipeline YAML definition file with appropriate environment variables.

e2e:test-on-omnibus execution pipeline

E2E test execution pipeline consists of several stages which all support execution of E2E tests.

.pre

This stage is responsible for the following tasks:

test

This stage runs e2e tests against different types of GitLab configurations. The number of jobs executed is determined dynamically by e2e-test-pipeline-generate job.

report

This stage is responsible for allure test report generation.

Adding new jobs

Selective test execution depends on a set of rules present in every job definition. A typical job contains the following attributes: 

variables:
  QA_SCENARIO: Test::Integration::MyNewJob
rules:
  - !reference [.rules:test:qa, rules]
  - if: $QA_SUITES =~ /Test::Integration::MyNewJob/
  - !reference [.rules:test:manual, rules]

In this example:

  • QA_SCENARIO: Test::Integration::MyNewJob: name of the scenario class that is passed to the gitlab-qa executor.
  • !reference [.rules:test:qa, rules]: main rule definition that is matched for pipelines that should execute all tests. For example, when changes to qa framework are present.

  • if: $QA_SUITES =~ /Test::Integration::MyNewJob/: main rule responsible for selective test execution. QA_SUITE is the name of the scenario abstraction located in qa framework.

    QA_SUITE is not the same as QA_SCENARIO, which is passed to the gitlab-qa executor. For consistency, it usually has the same name. QA_SUITE abstraction class usually contains information on what tags to run and optionally some additional setup steps.

  • !reference [.rules:test:manual, rules]: final rule that is always matched and sets the job to manual so it can still be executed on demand, even if not set to execute by selective test execution.

Considering example above, perform the following steps to create a new job:

  1. Create new scenario type my_new_job.rb in the integration directory of the gitlab-qa project and release new version so it’s generally available.

  2. Create new scenario my_new_job.rb in integration directory of the qa framework. In the most simple case, this scenario would define RSpec tags that should be executed: 

    module QA
  module Scenario
    module Test
      module Integration
        class MyNewJob < Test::Instance::All
          tags :some_special_tag
        end
      end
    end
  end
end

  3. Add new job definition in the main.gitlab-ci.yml pipeline definition: 

    ee:my-new-job:
  extends: .qa
  variables:
    QA_SCENARIO: Test::Integration::MyNewJob
  rules:
    - !reference [.rules:test:qa, rules]
    - if: $QA_SUITES =~ /Test::Integration::MyNewJob/
    - !reference [.rules:test:manual, rules]

Parallel jobs

For selective execution to work correctly with job types that require running multiple parallel jobs, a job definition typically must be split into parallel and selective variants. Splitting is necessary so that when selective execution executes only a single spec, multiple unnecessary jobs are not spawned. For example: 

ee:my-new-job-selective:
  extends: .qa
  variables:
    QA_SCENARIO: Test::Integration::MyNewJob
  rules:
    - !reference [.rules:test:qa-selective, rules]
    - if: $QA_SUITES =~ /Test::Integration::MyNewJob/
ee:my-new-job:
  extends:
    - .parallel
    - ee:my-new-job-selective
  rules:
    - !reference [.rules:test:qa-parallel, rules]
    - if: $QA_SUITES =~ /Test::Integration::MyNewJob/

e2e:test-on-gdk

The e2e:test-on-gdk child pipeline supports development of the GitLab platform by providing feedback to engineers on end-to-end test execution faster than via e2e:test-on-omnibus.

This is achieved by running tests against the GitLab Development Kit (GDK), which can be built and installed in less time than when testing against Omnibus GitLab. The trade-off is that Omnibus GitLab can be used to deploy a production installation, whereas the GDK is a development environment. Tests that run against the GDK might not catch bugs that depend on part of the process of preparing GitLab to run in a production environment, including pre-compiling assets, assigning configuration defaults as part of an official installation package, deploying GitLab services to multiple servers, and more. On the other hand, engineers who use the GDK day-to-day can benefit from automated tests catching bugs that only appear on the GDK.

Setup

The pipeline setup consists of several jobs in the main GitLab pipeline:

  • The e2e-test-pipeline-generate job in the prepare stage. This is the same job as in the e2e:test-on-omnibus pipeline.
  • The build-gdk-image job in the build-images stage.
  • The e2e:test-on-gdk trigger job in the qa stage, which triggers the child pipeline that runs E2E tests.

build-gdk-image

This job uses the code from the merge request to build a Docker image that can be used in test jobs to launch a GDK instance in a container. The image is pushed to the container registry.

The job also runs in pipelines on the default branch to build a base image that includes the GDK and GitLab components. This avoids building the entire image from scratch in merge requests. However, if the merge request includes changes to certain GitLab components or code the job will rebuild the base image before building the image that will be used in the test jobs.

e2e:test-on-gdk child pipeline

Like the e2e:test-on-omnibus pipeline, the e2e:test-on-gdk pipeline consists of several stages that support execution of E2E tests.

.pre

This stage is responsible for fetching knapsack reports that support parallel test execution.

test

This stage runs e2e tests against different types of GitLab configurations. The number of jobs executed is determined dynamically by the e2e-test-pipeline-generate job.

Each job starts a container from the GDK Docker image created in the build-gdk-image job, and then executes the end-to-end tests against the GDK instance running in the container.

report

This stage is responsible for allure test report generation.

e2e:test-on-cng

The e2e:test-on-cng child pipeline runs tests against Cloud Native GitLab installation. Unlike review-apps, this pipeline uses local kind Kubernetes cluster.

Deployment is managed by the cng orchestrator tool, which you can also use to locally recreate CI/CD deployments.

This pipeline is executed in merge requests and is part of pre-merge validation lifecycle. If any test is failing, this will prevent ability to merge introduced code changes.

Setup

The pipeline setup consists of several jobs in the main GitLab pipeline:

  • compile-production-assets and build-assets-image jobs are responsible for compiling frontend assets which are required by CNG build pipeline.
  • e2e-test-pipeline-generate job is responsible for generating e2e:test-on-cng child pipeline

e2e:test-on-cng child pipeline

Child pipeline consists of several stages that support E2E test execution.

.pre

  • build-cng-env job is responsible for setting up all environment variables for CNG downstream pipeline
  • build-cng job triggers CNG downstream pipeline which is responsible for building all necessary images

test

Jobs in test stage perform following actions:

  • local k8s cluster setup using kind
  • GitLab installation using official helm chart
  • E2E test execution against performed deployment

report

This stage is responsible for allure test report generation as well as test metrics upload.

Debugging

To help with debugging:

  • Each test job prints a list of arguments that you can pass to the cng orchestrator to exactly recreate the same deployment for local debugging.
  • Cluster events log and all pod logs are saved in E2E test job artifacts.
  • cng orchestrator will automatically output all cluster events with errors in case of failed deployment