Files
scylladb/test/boost
Botond Dénes 49ed97cec8 Merge '[Backport 2026.1] Fix regression in Alternator TTL with tablets and node going down' from Scylladb[bot]
Recently we suffered a regression on how Alternator TTL behaves when a node goes down when tablets are used.

Usually, expiration of data in a particular tablet are handled by this tablet's "primary replica". However, if that node is down, we want another node to perform these expiration until the primary replica goes back online. We created a function `tablet_map::get_secondary_replica()` to select that "other node". We don't care too much what the "secondary replica" means, but we do care that it's different from the primary replica - if it's the same the expiration of that tablet will never be done.

It turns out that recently, in commits 817fdad and d88036d, the implementation of get_primary_replica() changed without a corresponding change to get_secondary_replica(). After those changes, the two functions are mismatched, and sometimes return the same node for both primary and secondary replica.

Unfortunately, although we had a dtest for the handling of a dead node in Alternator TTL, it failed to reproduce this bug, so this regression was missed - nothing else besides Alternator TTL ever used the get_secondary_replica() function.

So this series, in addition to fixing the bug, we add two tests that reproduce this bug (fail before the fix, pass with the fix):

1. A unit test that checks that get_secondary_replica() always returns a different node from get_primary_replica()
2. A cluster test based on the original dtest, which does reproduce this bug in Alternator TTL where some of the data was never expired (but only failed in release build, for an unknown reason).

Fixes SCYLLADB-777.

- (cherry picked from commit 9ab3d5b946)

- (cherry picked from commit 0c7f499750)

- (cherry picked from commit e463d528fe)

Parent PR: #28771

Closes scylladb/scylladb#28803

* github.com:scylladb/scylladb:
  test: add unit test for tablet_map::get_secondary_replica()
  test, alternator: add test for TTL expiration with a node down
  locator: fix get_secondary_replica() to match get_primary_replica()
2026-03-04 14:21:44 +02:00
..

Scylla unit tests using C++ and the Boost test framework

The source files in this directory are Scylla unit tests written in C++ using the Boost.Test framework. These unit tests come in three flavors:

  1. Some simple tests that check stand-alone C++ functions or classes use Boost's BOOST_AUTO_TEST_CASE.

  2. Some tests require Seastar features, and need to be declared with Seastar's extensions to Boost.Test, namely SEASTAR_TEST_CASE.

  3. Even more elaborate tests require not just a functioning Seastar environment but also a complete (or partial) Scylla environment. Those tests use the do_with_cql_env() or do_with_cql_env_thread() function to set up a mostly-functioning environment behaving like a single-node Scylla, in which the test can run.

While we have many tests of the third flavor, writing new tests of this type should be reserved to white box tests - tests where it is necessary to inspect or control Scylla internals that do not have user-facing APIs such as CQL. In contrast, black-box tests - tests that can be written only using user-facing APIs, should be written in one of newer test frameworks that we offer - such as test/cqlpy or test/alternator (in Python, using the CQL or DynamoDB APIs respectively) or test/cql (using textual CQL commands), or - if more than one Scylla node is needed for a test - using the test/topology* framework.

Running tests

Because these are C++ tests, they need to be compiled before running. To compile a single test executable row_cache_test, use a command like

ninja build/dev/test/boost/row_cache_test

You can also use ninja dev-test to build all C++ tests, or use ninja deb-build to build the C++ tests and also the full Scylla executable (however, note that full Scylla executable isn't needed to run Boost tests).

Replace "dev" by "debug" or "release" in the examples above and below to use the "debug" build mode (which, importantly, compiles the test with ASAN and UBSAN enabling on and helps catch difficult-to-catch use-after-free bugs) or the "release" build mode (optimized for run speed).

To run an entire test file row_cache_test, including all its test functions, use a command like:

build/dev/test/boost/row_cache_test -- -c1 -m1G 

to run a single test function test_reproduce_18045() from the longer test file, use a command like:

build/dev/test/boost/row_cache_test -t test_reproduce_18045 -- -c1 -m1G 

In these command lines, the parameters before the -- are passed to Boost.Test, while the parameters after the -- are passed to the test code, and in particular to Seastar. In this example Seastar is asked to run on one CPU (-c1) and use 1G of memory (-m1G) instead of hogging the entire machine. The Boost.Test option -t test_reproduce_18045 asks it to run just this one test function instead of all the test functions in the executable.

Unfortunately, interrupting a running test with control-C while doesn't work. This is a known bug (#5696). Kill a test with SIGKILL (-9) if you need to kill it while it's running.

Boost tests can also be run using test.py - which is a script that provides a uniform way to run all tests in scylladb.git - C++ tests, Python tests, etc.

Execution with pytest

To run all tests with pytest execute

pytest test/boost

To execute all tests in one file, provide the path to the source filename as a parameter

pytest test/boost/aggregate_fcts_test.cc

Since it's a normal path, autocompletion works in the terminal out of the box.

To execute only one test function, provide the path to the source file and function name

pytest --mode dev test/boost/aggregate_fcts_test.cc::test_aggregate_avg

To provide a specific mode, use the next parameter --mode dev, if parameter isn't provided pytest tries to use ninja mode_list to find out the compiled modes.

Parallel execution is controlled by pytest-xdist and the parameter -n auto. This command starts tests with the number of workers equal to CPU cores. The useful command to discover the tests in the file or directory is

pytest --collect-only -q --mode dev test/boost/aggregate_fcts_test.cc

That will return all test functions in the file. To execute only one function from the test, you can invoke the output from the previous command. However, suffix for mode should be skipped. For example, output shows in the terminal something like this test/boost/aggregate_fcts_test.cc::test_aggregate_avg.dev. So to execute this specific test function, please use the next command

pytest --mode dev test/boost/aggregate_fcts_test.cc::test_aggregate_avg

Writing tests

Because of the large build time and build size of each separate test executable, it is recommended to put test functions into relatively large source files. But not too large - to keep compilation time of a single source file (during development) at reasonable levels.

When adding new source files in test/boost, don't forget to list the new source file in configure.py and also in CMakeLists.txt. The former is needed by our CI, but the latter is preferred by some developers.