How to handle tests that need to reboot?

[silversocket]

Is possible to reboot a box that is in the middle of a test, then start pytest back up, and pickup where it left off?
Or maybe reboot after a test, then pickup at the next test and continue?

EDIT: If it's not possible currently, if there was a $1million reward for supporting this functionality, at a high level, what changes would be required?

[The-Compiler]

No $1million reward needed, you could probably write a plugin doing this kind of thing. It would need to somehow keep track of which tests are already executed and write that to a file, and then use that to resume afterwards. Check pytest's own --lf or --stepwise for inspiration.

[silversocket]

That makes sense.
I'm trying to test out the ability to cache results as it runs, and when pytest runs again, I'd like all the previous tests to "rerun" except instead of actually running the function, I just load data/results from the cache.
That way the terminal output and junit makes it look like everything ran without a reboot.
Do you know how I can force load in the previous data per test?
It looks like modifying pytest_pyfunc_call will allow me to run a stub function ✅ .
I tried using pytest_runtest_logreport to change the report.outcome to "failed" for an actually passing test, but in the end, the test still gets shown as passed in the final summary and the junit 🟥

[The-Compiler]

Maybe try marking your pytest_runtest_logreport as hookwrapper - see my (silly) pytest-vw plugin for inspiration.

[silversocket]

Excellent thanks! Looks like using pytest_runtest_makereport instead of pytest_runtest_logreport is working 🍾

[The-Compiler]

Ah, well spotted, I didn't even notice the difference when I was writing my comment 😆

[nicoddemus]

@silversocket if this answered your question, could you mark it as answered then? Thanks!

[RonnyPfannschmidt]

my personal general suggestion is, that if a reboot control is needed, the test should be running on a system different from the one being reboot in order to orchestrate it in a manner that allows the bookkeeping to be done by a in test api

[silversocket]

I appreciate your suggestion. That is the common test architecture, but it would be really cool to be able to reboot on the same box.

[RonnyPfannschmidt]

if most programming languages and operating systems where in a position where a reboot mid process wouldn't loose state and still work reliable, i doubt we'd need reboots anymore to begin with ^^