[NEST Users] New Continuous Integration Setup and Porting Tests to Python

Dear NEST Developers and Users, Those of you following the NEST Github repository will have noticed a high level of activity last week and an all new appearance of Github actions for NEST (see https://github.com/nest/nest-simulator/actions/runs/4858443145 for an example). First of all, thanks to a major effort by Dennis Terhorst in particular, we have a completely re-organized continuous integration test setup. A considerably larger set of static code checks is now run independent of each other in a first stage of testing before NEST is build on Linux and macOS runners for actual testing. Furthermore, documentation is also linted and test-built. Overall, this setup runs faster and provides more information and assurances. Second, we have started a major effort to port all tests from the SLI-based testsuite to Python using pytest, so that we eventually will be able to remove the SLI interpreter and still have a full set of tests for NEST. Over time, the number of tests in `testsuite/{unittests, regressiontests, mpitests}` will decrease as tests are moved to `testsuite/pytests`. In that directory, new tests are distributed into several subdirectories according the the part of NEST they cover. Those directories are all prefixed with `sli2py_` for now; the prefix will be dropped when the transition is complete. We have tried to come up with good pytest test designs, but we are still developing our skills and style in this area. In general, consider tests in the sli2py_ directories as reference. Tests in the main pytests directory and its other subdirectories are mostly written in older unittest style and have not undergone thorough review. We plan to bring them ajour later. As a side effect of this transition, the number of tests reported by the testsuite has increased significantly. This has mainly two reasons: Many *.sli test files contained multiple tests but were counted only as one. And pytest's parametrize support allows us to run tests more systematically across models. If you would like to join our effort in porting tests form SLI to Python, why not drop by the Open NEST Developer VC on Monday? Best, Hans Ekkehard -- Prof. Dr. Hans Ekkehard Plesser Head, Department of Data Science Faculty of Science and Technology Norwegian University of Life Sciences PO Box 5003, 1432 Aas, Norway Phone +47 6723 1560 Email hans.ekkehard.plesser@nmbu.no<mailto:hans.ekkehard.plesser@nmbu.no> Home http://arken.nmbu.no/~plesser