[py-dev] pytest-timeout 0.2

[Brack, Laurent P.]

I don't want to make this issue overly complicated but here are some scenarios (that we have).

Our tests, in some instances, interact with python extensions written in C or C++ (or in some case COM inproc server - yuk) which can be multi-threaded.
 
If the hang occurs in a critical section in the C/C++ domain I am not sure what the timeout effect would be but 
Assuming that the test is pre-empted in a critical section (of the extension), we would most likely be doomed anyway (mutexes would not be released). Next test would hang, be aborted and so on. 

In our case, the safest thing to do is to run with xdist -n 1 so then the OS takes care of doing most if not all the cleanup.
I am not so intimate with xdist but I was hoping that upon detecting that the "remote process" had died, 
xdist would restart a new one. 

In this case pytest ended with:

[gw0] win32 -- Python 2.7.2 C:\Python27\python.exe
Slave 'gw0' crashed while running 'src/timeout/test_sample.py::TestTimeOut::()::test_hang'

Which signaled the end of everything (other tests were not run). This is a something we will have to solve internally 
(and when we have the solution will be more than happy to contribute it back). We might be able to restart a remote 
Process on pytest_testnodedown(). We would be however too late to run any restore() and chances are that those might hang as well.

More food for thoughts than anything at this point. 

Floris, thanks for your work. We are not yet in a position where we can help much but we will get to it.

/Laurent

P.S.: Speaking of xdist, further down the road we are interested in extending xdist (via its hooks) to interface it with OpenStack (dynamic provisioning of VM). Anyone has any use for this or thinking about the same thing?

-----Original Message-----
From: floris.bruynooghe at gmail.com [mailto:floris.bruynooghe at gmail.com] On Behalf Of Floris Bruynooghe
Sent: Monday, March 19, 2012 3:21 PM
To: Brack, Laurent P.
Cc: holger krekel; py-dev at codespeak.net; Brard, Valentin
Subject: Re: [py-dev] pytest-timeout 0.2

On 19 March 2012 16:38, Brack, Laurent P. <lpbrac at dolby.com> wrote:
> It would also be nice to have a consistent behavior between sigalarm on/off. For instance, on Windows, pytest exits on first hang as opposed to *nix where the test is pre-empted and pytest moves on to the next one.

I was writing up a response saying I didn't know how to do so, but while doing so I thought it might be possible to emulate sigalrm with a timer thread which fires an other signal.  I might investigate the feasibility of such an approach.  I do worry about gratuitously using signals however, the simple timer thread with os._exit() may always have to stay as the fail-safe option.

If anyone has any other ideas about this please let me know.

Regards,
Floris


--
Debian GNU/Linux -- The Power of Freedom www.debian.org | www.gnu.org | www.kernel.org