debian-mirror-gitlab/qa/README.md

GitLab QA - End-to-end tests for GitLab

This directory contains end-to-end tests for GitLab. It includes the test framework and the tests themselves.

The tests can be found in qa/specs/features (not to be confused with the unit tests for the test framework, which are in spec/).

Tests use GitLab QA project for environment orchestration in CI jobs.

What is it?

GitLab QA is an end-to-end tests suite for GitLab.

These are black-box and entirely click-driven end-to-end tests you can run against any existing instance.

How does it work?

1. When we release a new version of GitLab, we build a Docker images for it.
2. Along with GitLab Docker Images we also build and publish GitLab QA images.
3. GitLab QA project uses these images to execute end-to-end tests.

Validating GitLab views / partials / selectors in merge requests

We recently added a new CI job that is going to be triggered for every push event in CE and EE projects. The job is called qa:selectors and it will verify coupling between page objects implemented as a part of GitLab QA and corresponding views / partials / selectors in CE / EE.

Whenever qa:selectors job fails in your merge request, you are supposed to fix page objects. You should also trigger end-to-end tests using package-and-qa manual action, to test if everything works fine.

How can I use it?

You can use GitLab QA to exercise tests on any live instance! If you don't have an instance available you can follow the instructions below to use the GitLab Development Kit (GDK). This is the recommended option if you would like to contribute to the tests.

Note that tests are using Chrome web browser by default so it should be installed and present in PATH.

CI

Tests are executed in merge request pipelines as part of the development lifecycle.

• Review app environment
• e2e:package-and-test

Including tests in other projects

Pipeline template for package-and-test E2E tests is designed in a way so it can be included as a child pipeline in other projects.

Minimal configuration example would look like this:

qa-test:
  stage: test
  variables:
    RELEASE: EE
  trigger:
    strategy: depend
    forward:
      yaml_variables: true
      pipeline_variables: true
    include:
      - project: gitlab-org/gitlab
        ref: master
        file: .gitlab/ci/package-and-test/main.gitlab-ci.yml

To set GitLab version used for testing, following environment variables can be used:

• RELEASE: omnibus release, can be string value EE or CE for nightly release of enterprise or community edition of GitLab or can be fully qualified Docker image name
• QA_IMAGE: Docker image of qa code. By default inferred from RELEASE but can be explicitly overridden with this variable

Test specific environment variables

Special GitLab configurations require various specific environment variables to be present for tests to work. These can be provisioned automatically using terraform setup in engineering-productivity-infrastructure project.

Logging

By default tests on CI use info log level. debug level is still available in case of failure debugging. Logs are stored in jobs artifacts.

Writing tests

• Writing tests from scratch tutorial
  • Best practices
  • Using page objects
  • Guidelines
  • Tests with special setup for local environments

Run the end-to-end tests in a local development environment

1. Follow the instructions to install GDK, your local GitLab development environment.

2. Navigate to the QA folder and run the following commands.

cd gitlab-development-kit/gitlab/qa
bundle install
export WEBDRIVER_HEADLESS=false
export GITLAB_INITIAL_ROOT_PASSWORD={your current root user's password}

1. Most tests that do not require special setup could simply be run with the following command. However, tests that are tagged with :orchestrated tag require special setup. These tests can only be run with bin/qa script.

bundle exec rspec <path/to/spec.rb>

1. For test that are tagged with :orchestrated, re-configure IP address in GDK to run QA tests. Once you have reconfigured GDK, ensure GitLab is running successfully on the IP address configured, then run the following command:

bundle exec bin/qa Test::Instance::All {GDK IP ADDRESS}

• Note: If you want to run tests requiring SSH against GDK, you will need to modify your GDK setup.
• Note: 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, use that when exporting GITLAB_INITIAL_ROOT_PASSWORD.

Run the end-to-end tests on 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

2. 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"
   

3. 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:

   • Google Chrome
   • Docker Desktop
   • Git
   • Ruby. Please refer to the .ruby-version file for the exact version of Ruby to install.

   Note: Please be aware that Docker Desktop must be set to use Linux containers.

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
   

Running 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 EE_LICENSE=$(cat /path/to/gitlab_license)

Running specific tests

You can also 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

Running tests for 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

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 admin user. 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

Building a Docker image to test

Once you have made changes to the CE/EE repositories, you may want to build a Docker image to test locally instead of waiting for the gitlab-ce-qa or gitlab-ee-qa nightly builds. To do that, you can run from the top gitlab directory (one level up from this directory):

docker build -t gitlab/gitlab-ce-qa:nightly --file ./qa/Dockerfile ./

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

Running tests with a 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

Running tests with a feature flag enabled or disabled

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: You can also toggle feature flags in the tests themselves.

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