What’s New in Workload Automation

Version 3.1.2

Fixes/Improvements

Framework:

  • Implement an explicit check for Devlib versions to ensure that versions are kept in sync with each other.
  • Added a View parameter to ApkWorkloads for use with certain instruments for example fps.
  • Added "supported_versions" attribute to workloads to allow specifying a list of supported version for a particular workload.
  • Change default behaviour to run any available version of a workload if a specific version is not specified.

Output Processors:

  • Postgres: Fix handling of screen_resoultion during processing.

Other

  • Added additional information to documentation
  • Added fix for Devlib’s KernelConfig refactor
  • Added a "label" property to Metrics

Version 3.1.1

Fixes/Improvements

Other

  • Improve formatting when displaying metrics
  • Update revent binaries to include latest fixes
  • Update DockerImage to use new released version of WA and Devlib
  • Fix broken package on PyPi

Version 3.1.0

New Features:

Commands

  • create database: Added create subcommand command in order to initialize a PostgresSQL database to allow for storing WA output with the Postgres Output Processor.

Output Processors:

  • Postgres: Added output processor which can be used to populate a Postgres database with the output generated from a WA run.
  • logcat-regex: Add new output processor to extract arbitrary “key” “value” pairs from logcat.

Configuration:

  • Configuration Includes: Add support for including other YAML files inside agendas and config files using "include#:" entries.
  • Section groups: This allows for a group entry to be specified for each section and will automatically cross product the relevant sections with sections from other groups adding the relevant classifiers.

Framework:

  • Added support for using the OutputAPI with a Postgres Database backend. Used to retrieve and process run data uploaded by the Postgres output processor.

Workloads:

  • gfxbench-corporate: Execute a set of on and offscreen graphical benchmarks from GFXBench including Car Chase and Manhattan.
  • glbench: Measures the graphics performance of Android devices by testing the underlying OpenGL (ES) implementation.

Fixes/Improvements

Framework:

  • Remove quotes from sudo_cmd parameter default value due to changes in devlib.
  • Various Python 3 related fixes.
  • Ensure plugin names are converted to identifiers internally to act more consistently when dealing with names containing -‘s etc.
  • Now correctly updates RunInfo with project and run name information.
  • Add versioning support for POD structures with the ability to automatically update data structures / formats to new versions.

Commands:

  • Fix revent target initialization.
  • Fix revent argument validation.

Workloads:

  • Speedometer: Close open tabs upon workload completion.
  • jankbench: Ensure that the logcat monitor thread is terminated correctly to prevent left over adb processes.
  • UiAutomator workloads are now able to dismiss android warning that a workload has not been designed for the latest version of android.

Other:

  • Report additional metadata about target, including: system_id, page_size_kb.
  • Uses cache directory to reduce target calls, e.g. will now use cached version of TargetInfo if local copy is found.
  • Update recommended installation commands when installing from github due to pip not following dependency links correctly.
  • Fix incorrect parameter names in runtime parameter documentation.

Version 3.0.0

WA3 is a more or less from-scratch re-write of WA2. We have attempted to maintain configuration-level compatibility wherever possible (so WA2 agendas should mostly work with WA3), however some breaks are likely and minor tweaks may be needed.

It terms of the API, WA3 is completely different, and WA2 extensions will not work with WA3 – they would need to be ported into WA3 plugins.

For more information on migrating from WA2 to WA3 please see the Migration Guide.

Not all of WA2 extensions have been ported for the initial 3.0.0 release. We have ported the ones we believe to be most widely used and useful. The porting work will continue, and more of WA2’s extensions will be in the future releases. However, we do not intend to port absolutely everything, as some things we believe to be no longer useful.

Note

If there a particular WA2 extension you would like to see in WA3 that is not yet there, please let us know via the GitHub issues. (And, of course, we always welcome pull requests, if you have the time to do the port yourselves :-) ).

New Features

  • Python 3 support. WA now runs on both Python 2 and Python 3.

    Warning

    Python 2 support should now be considered deprecated. Python 2 will still be fully supported up to the next major release (v3.1). After that, Python 2 will be supported for existing functionality, however there will be no guarantee that newly added functionality would be compatible with Python 2. Support for Python 2 will be dropped completely after release v3.2.

  • There is a new Output API which can be used to aid in post processing a run’s output. For more information please see Output.

  • All “augmentations” can now be enabled on a per workload basis (in WA2 this was available for instruments, but not result processors).

  • More portable runtime parameter specification. Runtime parameters now support generic aliases, so instead of specifying a73_frequency: 1805000 in your agenda, and then having to modify this for another target, it is now possible to specify big_frequency: max.

  • -c option can now be used multiple times to specify several config files for a single run, allowing for a more fine-grained configuration management.

  • It is now possible to disable all previously configured augmentations from an agenda using ~~.

  • Offline output processing with wa process command. It is now possible to run processors on previously collected WA results, without the need for a target connection.

  • A lot more metadata is collected as part of the run, including much more detailed information about the target, and MD5 hashes of all resources used during the run.

  • Better show command. wa show command now utilizes pandoc and man to produce easier-to-browse documentation format, and has been enhanced to include documentation on general settings, runtime parameters, and plugin aliases.

  • Better logging. The default stdout output is now more informative. The verbose output is much more detailed. Nested indentation is used for different phases of execution to make log output easier to parse visually.

  • Full ChromeOS target support. Including support for the Android container apps.

  • Implemented on top of devlib. WA3 plugins can make use of devlib’s enhanced target API (much richer and more robust than WA2’s Device API).

  • All-new documentation. The docs have been revamped to be more useful and complete.

Changes

  • Configuration files config.py are now specified in YAML format in config.yaml. WA3 has support for automatic conversion of the default config file and will be performed upon first invocation of WA3.
  • The “config” and “global” sections in an agenda are now interchangeable so can all be specified in a “config” section.
  • “Results Processors” are now known as “Output Processors” and can now be ran offline.
  • “Instrumentation” is now known as “Instruments” for more consistent naming.
  • Both “Output Processor” and “Instrument” configuration have been merged into “Augmentations” (support for the old naming schemes have been retained for backwards compatibility)