testing

name	testing
description	Testing reference for Megatron Bridge — unit and functional test layout, tier semantics (L0/L1/L2/flaky), script conventions, running tests locally, adding/moving/disabling tests, and pytest conventions.
when_to_use	Adding, running, moving, or disabling tests; debugging a test failure; choosing the right test tier; understanding L0 vs L1 vs L2; handling flaky tests; 'add a test', 'which tier', 'functional test layout'.

Testing

Directory Layout

tests/
  unit_tests/          # fast, isolated, no GPU required
  functional_tests/
    launch_scripts/
      h100/
        active/        # H100 tests that run in CI automatically
        flaky/         # H100 tests quarantined from blocking CI
      gb200/
        active/        # GB200 tests that run in CI automatically
        flaky/         # GB200 tests quarantined from blocking CI

Unit tests are independent of the launch script layout. Functional test scripts are named {Tier}_{Description}.sh (e.g., L0_Launch_training.sh).

Tier Semantics

Tier	Trigger	Blocking
L0	Every PR, every push to main, schedule	Yes — PR cannot merge if L0 fails
L1	Push to main, schedule, PRs with needs-more-tests label	Yes
L2	Schedule, workflow_dispatch, PRs with full-test-suite label	Yes (when triggered)
flaky	workflow_dispatch with test_suite=all only	No — failures are informational

H100 and GB200 each have independent L0/L1/L2/flaky jobs. Moving a script to flaky/ removes it from blocking CI on that hardware target only.

Tier assignment criteria

Reserve L0 for high-risk shared paths and the smallest current set of representative first-tier gates. L1 holds secondary but still broadly useful coverage that runs on main, on schedules, and for opt-in PRs through the established needs-more-tests label. Place legacy, redundant, niche, specialized, or expensive model-family coverage in L2. Popularity alone does not determine a test's tier; weigh risk, representativeness, cost, and overlap with existing coverage.

Prefer unit tests over functional tests. CI GPU resources are limited; every functional test slot has a real cost.

Running Tests Locally

Unit Tests

No GPU required:

uv run pytest tests/unit_tests/ -x -v

Or inside Docker:

docker run --rm --gpus all -v $(pwd):/workdir/ -w /workdir/ megatron-bridge \
  uv run pytest tests/unit_tests/

Functional Tests

Run the corresponding launch script directly on a GPU node:

bash tests/functional_tests/launch_scripts/h100/active/L0_Launch_training.sh

Adding a Unit Test

1. Place the file under tests/unit_tests/<domain>/test_<name>.py.
2. Mark it: @pytest.mark.unit.
3. Keep configs tiny: small hidden dims, 1-2 layers, short sequences.
4. Run locally: uv run python -m pytest tests/unit_tests/<your_test>.py

No foreign setattr on config dataclasses. When applying overrides via setattr(config_obj, key, value), always guard first:

if not hasattr(config_obj, key):
    raise ValueError(f"Config has no field '{key}'")
setattr(config_obj, key, value)

Setting a non-existent attribute silently creates a phantom field — the test passes but the recipe fails for a real user.

Adding a Functional Test

1. Create the script under tests/functional_tests/launch_scripts/{h100,gb200}/active/.
2. Start the file with a timeout header:

   # CI_TIMEOUT=<minutes>
   

3. Name it {Tier}_{CamelDescription}.sh — the tier prefix controls which CI matrix includes it.
4. Make it executable: chmod +x <file>.
5. Functional tests must use at most 2 GPUs.

No workflow file changes needed — the matrix is generated dynamically by scanning the directory.

Moving a Test to Flaky

# H100
git mv tests/functional_tests/launch_scripts/h100/active/L0_Foo.sh \
       tests/functional_tests/launch_scripts/h100/flaky/L0_Foo.sh

# GB200 (if the test also exists there)
git mv tests/functional_tests/launch_scripts/gb200/active/L0_Foo.sh \
       tests/functional_tests/launch_scripts/gb200/flaky/L0_Foo.sh

Flaky tests still run on manual dispatches (test_suite=all) so failures remain visible. Move back to active/ once the underlying issue is fixed.

Removing a Test

Delete the script file and commit. No other changes required.

Pytest Conventions

• Use pytest fixtures for common setup.
• Available markers: unit, integration, system, acceptance, docs, skipduringci, pleasefixme.
• Functional tests are capped at 2 GPUs. Set CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES explicitly for multi-GPU tests.
• Use uv run python -m pytest, never bare pytest.

CI Job Reference

GitHub Actions job	Hardware	Directory scanned
cicd-functional-tests-l0	H100	h100/active/L0_*.sh
cicd-functional-tests-l1	H100	h100/active/L1_*.sh
cicd-functional-tests-l2	H100	h100/active/L2_*.sh
cicd-functional-tests-flaky	H100	h100/flaky/L*.sh
cicd-functional-tests-gb200-l0	GB200	gb200/active/L0_*.sh
cicd-functional-tests-gb200-l1	GB200	gb200/active/L1_*.sh
cicd-functional-tests-gb200-l2	GB200	gb200/active/L2_*.sh
cicd-functional-tests-gb200-flaky	GB200	gb200/flaky/L*.sh

Hardware runners: H100 uses nemo-ci-{azure,aws}-gpu-x2; GB200 uses nemo-ci-gcp-gpu-x2.

Code Anchors

Component	Path
Matrix generation (H100)	@.github/workflows/cicd-main.yml job generate-test-matrix
Matrix generation (GB200)	@.github/workflows/cicd-main.yml job generate-gb200-test-matrix
Test runner action	@.github/actions/test-template/action.yml
Launch scripts root	tests/functional_tests/launch_scripts/