Testing

plesty-lib ships ready-made tests, in plesty.lib.test, that a module runs on itself. They check what every module of its kind must get right, so a module does not have to write those tests itself. None of them imports pytest: a failure raises AssertionError, which fails a pytest test and can equally be run from a plain script next to the instrument.

Which tests each module runs

Module	Without the instrument	With the instrument
device	Testing a Device: DevicePipeline, checked by gate d1	Testing on the Instrument, Testing Over the Network, Testing Devices That Share a Computer
experiment	Testing an Experiment: ExperimentPipeline, checked by gate e1	a run on the real devices
analyzer	Testing an Analyzer: AnalyzerPipeline, checked by gate a1	—
viewer	Testing a Viewer	—

A gate is one of the checks that plesty check, the checking command of plesty-sdk (PLESTY’s developer tool), runs before a module may be published. Gates d1, e1 and a1 look for the tests above in the module and run them.

The tests without the instrument run anywhere, including in CI on every push. The tests with the instrument are kept out of CI and run next to the hardware.

In this chapter

Page	Covers
Testing a Device	the standard test of a device module, against a simulated instrument
Device Test Helpers	smaller tools for testing parameters, operations, shared instruments and parameter files
Testing an Experiment	checking an experiment’s plan without instruments
Testing an Analyzer	checking an analyzer on generated inputs
Testing a Viewer	checking plots without a window
Testing on the Instrument	checking a device on its real instrument, with timings and failure statistics
Testing Over the Network	the same, through a client, the network and the device’s server
Testing Devices That Share a Computer	whether devices on one computer slow each other down
Simulation	the stand-ins for hardware these tests use