Fix bad EthPM test

[gnidan]

The tests for EthPM (https://github.com/trufflesuite/truffle-core/blob/develop/test/ethpm.js) are very finicky, most notably the test around dependencies. This causes CI to fail erroneously all the time.

This can likely be solved via mocks and/or test flags that disable this test in CI contexts

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[vs77bb]

@nlaz Interested in this issue?

[nlaz]

Yeah I'll claim it. Thanks @vs77bb

[gnidan]

Thanks @nlaz!

Ideal solution would be to set up proper mocks for EthPM; let me know what approach you're thinking of before diving in. Appreciate it!

[vs77bb]

@nlaz @gnidan Sounds good, issue is in your hands Niko. @owocki Niko and I are working to get the issue formally claimed on Gitcoin... high gas prices causing a hold up. Told him it's his to run with, though!

[nlaz]

Hey @gnidan thanks for the support. Can you give me an example of an instance where the CI failed because of these tests? This would be helpful to know how to repro the issue. I agree with you that mocking EthPM is the better approach. Disabling tests specifically for CI seems troublesome. After looking at the code, my approach would likely involve giving lib/package.js a small refactor to accept an optional EthPM object in order to mock it in the test. I would then test whether installDependency or install was called correctly for EthPM. Does this sound reasonable to you?

[gnidan]

@nlaz it doesn't look like there are currently any failed CI jobs because of that test - your best bet might be to run that test repeatedly (locally). It's an intermittent failure, but I believe it occurs often enough that you should be able to catch it.

If you can't catch it, remove the retries logic in the test(s).

As far as that approach: it sounds good. I would be interested to see the ramifications outside lib/package.js, e.g. how the EthPM object is initialized and passed in, in the two environments (test / not test). Let me know once you start to make headway and/or if you have any questions!

Thanks!

[nlaz]

@gnidan sadly I am going to back out of this ticket. It's going to take someone more familiar with the codebase than I to avoid accidentally introducing side effects into the code following the above approach. I would recommend either passing in an optional mocked EthPM object into Package.install or stubbing out a global EthPM object in the tests. Hopefully someone else has more luck than I tackling this ticket.

[owocki]

thanks for letting us know @nlaz :)

@gnidan , can you please provide:

Reproduction

The steps (ideally command-line commands) to reproduce the error.

Additionally, its not clear: does the error occour during the tests of the truffle-core code itself, or when a project is created and tested?

Dev System Setup

Instructions on how to setup a development environment in order to contribute to truffle (in general, looks like this is generally missing in the overall project).

[gnidan]

@lazaridiscom:

Thanks for looking to take this on! To address your points:

Dev System Setup: Please see the Truffle project's CONTRIBUTING guide, which should outline the steps you need to get a working local copy of Truffle for development.

Reproduce Steps: Although this won't reliably reproduce the issue every time, you can increase the failure rate of the test by removing this line: https://github.com/trufflesuite/truffle-core/blob/develop/test/ethpm.js#L121. The error occurs in truffle-core, as part of the Package.install() operation, caused by intermittent network problems.

Obtaining more reliable reproduce steps can be considered part of the work if it helps you achieve the goal, but it may not be necessary—mocking EthPM in this test would be sufficient to meet the terms of the bounty, since removing the test's dependency on the network would also remove this intermittent failure.

Let me know if there's anything else I can help with. Thank you!

Thanks for all the info. The contributing guide gives good instructions, project setup is quite easy.

As for the issue, the expected Time-frame: 7 to 14 days (I will dive-in in tiny daily increments, in parallel to other tasks).

For now all fine from my side.

Note that I'm running into WinOS related problems (#105, #106, #107).

As the Truffle website states "Requires NodeJS 5.0+. Works on Linux, macOS, or Windows.", those must be fixed anyway before working on the main problem.

I've isolated the first problem-root, which is surprisingly the sandbox-creation. The reliance on github repos (not git but github) should be reduced, ideally to zero. The problems with http://raw.githubusercontent.com/ seem to be even worser, so this one should be avoided, too (coming to this next days).