Eventually() should have a variable time delay

[Jeff Lane ]

Looking at the code for Autopilot it seems that Eventually is hard coded to wait for 10 seconds. In playing with this with Checkbox, I found that sometimes that 10 second delay is not enough.

For example, it takes 15 - 20 seconds for buttonStartTesting to become enabled once tabTestList is visible because of some background stuff going on with checkbox at this point of the run. because of this, I have to introduce a sleep() call to force some extra time.

It would be nice if Eventually() accepted a wait time in seconds. Even better if this was passed through other things that call it. For example: assertProperty(objectProxy, property=value) also calls eventually. So if I do this:

sleep(20)
assertProperty(objectProxy, property=value)

it will sleep for 20 seconds, then assertProperty calls Eventually() internally which adds another 10 second delay.

[Thomi Richards (thomir-deactivatedaccount)]

Hi Jeff,

This sounds like a do-able feature addition. Thinking about it from an API point of view, would you be happy with this?

self.assertThat(foo.something, Eventually(Equals(24), timeout=20)

... to make Eventually wait 20 seconds. Leaving the keywork property out:

self.assertThat(foo.something, Eventually(Equals(24))

would default to 10 seconds.

AssertProperty is harder to fix - since there's no easy way to differentiate between a 'timeout' keyword, and a test against an attribute called 'timeout'.

Another option is to have some call like:

self.setAssertionTimeout(20)

which would set the timeout value to 20 seconds for the current test only. It's less fine-grained, but would work for both assertions.

I'm keen to get your feedback on this.

Cheers,

[Jeff Lane  (bladernr)]

On 12/02/2012 05:30 PM, Thomi Richards wrote:
> Hi Jeff,
>
> This sounds like a do-able feature addition. Thinking about it from an
> API point of view, would you be happy with this?
>
> self.assertThat(foo.something, Eventually(Equals(24), timeout=20)
>
> ... to make Eventually wait 20 seconds. Leaving the keywork property
> out:
>
> self.assertThat(foo.something, Eventually(Equals(24))
>
> would default to 10 seconds.

That would be great, actually. Eventually seems to be pretty useful, I
just happend to run into a case where Eventually() was timing out before
the event I was waiting on could finish.

> AssertProperty is harder to fix - since there's no easy way to
> differentiate between a 'timeout' keyword, and a test against an
> attribute called 'timeout'.
>
> Another option is to have some call like:
>
> self.setAssertionTimeout(20)
>
> which would set the timeout value to 20 seconds for the current test
> only. It's less fine-grained, but would work for both assertions.
>
> I'm keen to get your feedback on this.

How about simply having AssertProperty call Eventually() with a default
timeout of 1 (or is 0 possible with a timeout)?

Doesn't AssertProperty() simply call Eventually() the same way you would
via AssertThat()?

In any case, TBH, the AssertProperty() thing is only a cosmetic issue,
not one of functionality. It just seemed to me that waiting for a
timeout on something that is supposed to simply check NOW that
property=value was overkill. BUT, it doesn't affect the outcome in any
case, so if it's not an easy fix, I don't think it's as important an
improvement as making Eventually() accept variable timeouts.

--
Jeff Lane - Hardware Certification Engineer and Test Tools Developer
Ubuntu Ham: W4KDH
Freenode IRC: bladernr or bladernr_
gpg: 1024D/3A14B2DD 8C88 B076 0DD7 B404 1417 C466 4ABD 3635 3A14 B2DD

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package autopilot - 1.2daily12.12.10-0ubuntu1

---------------
autopilot (1.2daily12.12.10-0ubuntu1) raring; urgency=low

  [ Didier Roche ]
  * debian/control:
    - update build-dep for latest deps
  * Automatic snapshot from revision 90 (bootstrap):
    - autopilot is checking for gtk2 gconf instead of real (LP: #1060973)
    - autopilot exits with 0 when a test error-ed (LP: #1050208)
    - Fixes a wrong import of make_proxy_object_from_service_name.
      (LP: #1053023)
    - autopilot crashed with AssertionError in _get_name_from_path(): Path must
      be within the project (LP: #1044701)
    - Adds a man page for autopilot (LP: #1037940)

  [ Thomi Richards ]
  * Autopilot ibus module should use Gir ibus module, not 'python-ibus'
    (LP: #1078917)
  * No timestamp in verbose log (LP: #1067161)
  * Less than (<) keypress emulates as a greater than keypress (>) (LP:
    #1081318)
  * Eventually() should have a variable time delay (LP: #1083435)

  [ Leo Arias ]
  * Typos in getting started page (LP: #1078692)
  * Typo in writing good tests page (LP: #1079129)
  * Typo in docs: responde (LP: #1078680)
  * Typo in docs: autopiolot (LP: #1078683)
  * Typo in running autopilot page (LP: #1078710)

  [ Francis Ginther ]
  * UnicodeDecodeError after test-suite has finished (LP: #1078732)

  [ Martin Mrazik ]
  * UnicodeDecodeError after test-suite has finished (LP: #1078732)

  [ Automatic PS uploader ]
  * Automatic snapshot from revision 111
 -- Automatic PS uploader <email address hidden> Mon, 10 Dec 2012 00:01:06 +0000