-1 for "must not use random numbers for input" On Mon, Oct 16, 2017 at 7:56 AM, Bhavin Thaker <bhavintha...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I agree with Pedro. > > Based on various observations on unit test failures, I would like to > propose a few guidelines to follow for the unit tests. Even though I use > the word, “must” for my humble opinions below, please feel free to suggest > alternatives or modifications to these guidelines: > > 1) 1a) Each unit test must have a run time budget <= X minutes. Say, X = 2 > minutes max. > 1b) The total run time budget for all unit tests <= Y minutes. Say, Y = 60 > minutes max. > > 2) All Unit tests must have deterministic (not Stochastic) behavior. That > is, instead of using the random() function to test a range of input values, > each input test value must be carefully hand-picked to represent the > commonly used input scenarios. The correct place to stochastically test > random input values is to have continuously running nightly tests and NOT > the sanity/smoke/unit tests for each PR. > > 3) All Unit tests must be as much self-contained and independent of > external components as possible. For example, datasets required for the > unit test must NOT be present on external website which, if unreachable, > can cause test run failures. Instead, all datasets must be available > locally. > > 4) It is impossible to test everything in unit tests and so only common > use-cases and code-paths must be tested in unit-tests. Less common > scenarios like integration with 3rd party products must be tested in > nightly/weekly tests. > > 5) A unit test must NOT be disabled on a failure unless proven to exhibit > unreliable behavior. The burden-of-proof for a test failure must be on the > PR submitter and the PR must NOT be merged without a opening a new github > issue explaining the problem. If the unit test is disabled for some reason, > then the unit test must NOT be removed from the unit tests list; instead > the unit test must be modified to add the following lines at the start of > the test: > Print(“Unit Test DISABLED; see GitHub issue: NNNN”) > Exit(0) > > Please suggest modifications to the above proposal such that we can make > the unit tests framework to be the rock-solid foundation for the active > development of Apache MXNet (Incubating). > > Regards, > Bhavin Thaker. > > > On Mon, Oct 16, 2017 at 5:56 AM Pedro Larroy <pedro.larroy.li...@gmail.com > > > wrote: > > > Hi > > > > Some of the unit tests are extremely costly in terms of memory and > compute. > > > > As an example in the gluon tests we are loading all the datasets. > > > > test_gluon_data.test_datasets > > > > Also running huge networks like resnets in test_gluon_model_zoo. > > > > This is ridiculously slow, and straight impossible on some embedded / > > memory constrained devices, and anyway is making tests run for longer > than > > needed. > > > > Unit tests should be small, self contained, if possible pure (avoiding > this > > kind of dataset IO if possible). > > > > I think it would be better to split them in real unit tests and extended > > integration test suites that do more intensive computation. This would > also > > help with the feedback time with PRs and CI infrastructure. > > > > > > Thoughts? > > >
