Migration Guide

Users

Configuration

Default configuration file change

Instead of the standard config.py file located at $WA_USER_HOME/config.py WA now uses a confg.yaml file (at the same location) which is written in the YAML format instead of python. Additionally upon first invocation WA3 will automatically try and detect whether a WA2 config file is present and convert it to use the new WA3 format. During this process any known parameter name changes should be detected and updated accordingly.

Plugin Changes

Please note that not all plugins that were available for WA2 are currently available for WA3 so you may need to remove plugins that are no longer present from your config files. One plugin of note is the standard results processor, this has been removed and it’s functionality built into the core framework.


Agendas

WA3 is designed to keep configuration as backwards compatible as possible so most agendas should work out of the box, however the main changes in the style of WA3 agendas are:

Global Section

The global and config sections have been merged so now all configuration that was specified under the “global” keyword can now also be specified under “config”. Although “global” is still a valid keyword you will need to ensure that there are not duplicated entries in each section.

Instrumentation and Results Processors merged

The instrumentation and results_processors sections from WA2 have now been merged into a single augmentations section to simplify the configuration process. Although for backwards compatibility, support for the old sections has be retained.

Per workload enabling of augmentations

All augmentations can now been enabled and disabled on a per workload basis.

Setting Runtime Parameters

Runtime Parameters are now the preferred way of configuring, cpufreq, hotplug and cpuidle rather setting the corresponding sysfile values as this will perform additional validation and ensure the nodes are set in the correct order to avoid any conflicts.

Parameter Changes

Any parameter names changes listed below will also have their old names specified as aliases and should continue to work as normal, however going forward the new parameter names should be preferred:

  • The workload parameter clean_up has be renamed to cleanup_assets to better reflect its purpose.
  • The workload parameter check_apk has been renamed to prefer_host_package to be more explicit in it’s functionality to indicated whether a package on the target or the host should have priority when searching for a suitable package.
  • The execution order by_spec is now called by_workload for clarity of purpose. For more information please see Configuration.
  • The by_spec reboot policy has been removed as this is no longer relevant and the each_iteration reboot policy has been renamed to each_job, please see Configuration for more information.

Individual workload parameters have been attempted to be standardized for the more common operations e.g.:

  • iterations is now loops to indicate the how many ‘tight loops’ of the workload should be performed, e.g. without the setup/teardown method calls.
  • num_threads is now consistently threads across workloads.
  • run_timeout is now consistently timeout across workloads.
  • taskset_mask and cpus have been changed to consistently be referred to as cpus and its types is now a cpu_mask type allowing configuration to be supplied either directly as a mask, as a list of a list of cpu indexes or as a sysfs-style string.

Output

Output Directory

The output directory’s structure has changed layout and now includes additional subdirectories. There is now a __meta directory that contains copies of the agenda and config files supplied to WA for that particular run so that all the relevant config is self contained. Additionally if one or more jobs fail during a run then corresponding output directory will be moved into a __failed subdirectory to allow for quicker analysis.

Output API

There is now an Output API which can be used to more easily post process the output from a run. For more information please see the Output API documentation.


Developers

Framework

Imports

To distinguish between the different versions of WA, WA3’s package name has been renamed to wa. This means that all the old wlauto imports will need to be updated. For more information please see the corresponding section in the developer reference section

Asset Deployment

WA3 now contains a generic assets deployment and clean up mechanism so if a workload was previously doing this in an ad-hoc manner this should be updated to utilize the new functionality. To make use of this functionality a list of assets should be set as the workload deployable_assets attribute, these will be automatically retrieved via WA’s resource getters and deployed either to the targets working directory or a custom directory specified as the workloads assets_directory attribute. If a custom implementation is required the deploy_assets method should be overridden inside the workload. To allow for the removal of the additional assets any additional file paths should be added to the self.deployed_assets list which is used to keep track of any assets that have been deployed for the workload. This is what is used by the generic remove_assets method to clean up any files deployed to the target. Optionally if the file structure of the deployed assets requires additional logic then the remove_assets method can be overridden for a particular workload as well.


Workloads

Python Workload Structure

  • The update_results method has been split out into 2 stages. There is now extract_results and update_output which should be used for extracting any results from the target back to the host system and to update the output with any metrics or artefacts for the specific workload iteration respectively.
  • WA now features execution decorators which can be used to allow for more efficient binary deployment and that they are only installed to the device once per run. For more information of implementing this please see deploying executables to a target.

APK Functionality

All apk functionality has re-factored into an APKHandler object which is available as the apk attribute of the workload. This means that for example self.launchapplication() would now become self.apk.start_activity()

UiAutomator Java Structure

Instead of a single runUiAutomation method to perform all of the UiAutomation, the structure has been refactored into 5 methods that can optionally be overridden. The available methods are initialize, setup, runWorkload, extactResults and teardown to better mimic the different stages in the python workload.

  • initialize should be used to retrieve and set any relevant parameters required during the workload.
  • setup should be used to perform any setup required for the workload, for example dismissing popups or configuring and required settings.
  • runWorkload should be used to perform the actual measurable work of the workload.
  • extractResults should be used to extract any relevant results from the target after the workload has been completed.
  • teardown should be used to perform any final clean up of the workload on the target.

Note

The initialize method should have the @Before tag attached to the method which will cause it to be ran before each of the stages of the workload. The remaining method should all have the @Test tag attached to the method to indicate that this is a test stage that should be called at the appropriate time.

GUI Functionality

For UI based applications all UI functionality has been re-factored to into a gui attribute which currently will be either a UiAutomatorGUI object or a ReventGUI depending on the workload type. This means that for example if you wish to pass parameters to a UiAuotmator workload you will now need to use self.gui.uiauto_params['Parameter Name'] = value

Attributes

  • The old package attribute has been replaced by package_names which expects a list of strings which allows for multiple package names to be specified if required. It is also no longer required to explicitly state the launch-able activity, this will be automatically discovered from the apk so this workload attribute can be removed.

  • The device attribute of the workload is now a devlib target. Some of the command names remain the same, however there will be differences. The API can be found at http://devlib.readthedocs.io/en/latest/target.html however some of the more common changes can be found below:

    Original Method New Method
    self.device.pull_file(file) self.target.pull(file)
    self.device.push_file(file) self.target.push(file)
    self.device.install_executable(file) self.target.install(file)
    self.device.execute(cmd, background=True) self.target.background(cmd)