write-sglang-test

name	write-sglang-test
description	Guide for writing SGLang CI/UT tests. Covers CustomTestCase, CI registration, server fixtures, model selection, mock testing, and test placement. Always read test/README.md for the full CI layout, how to run tests, and extra tips. Use when creating new tests, adding CI test cases, writing unit tests, or when the user asks to add tests for SGLang features.

Writing SGLang CI / UT Tests

This skill covers how to write and register tests. For CI pipeline internals (stage ordering, fast-fail, gating, partitioning, debugging CI failures), see the CI workflow guide.

Core Rules

1. Always use CustomTestCase — never raw unittest.TestCase. It ensures tearDownClass runs even when setUpClass fails, preventing resource leaks in CI.
2. tearDownClass must be defensive — use hasattr/null checks before accessing resources (e.g. cls.process) that setUpClass may not have finished allocating.
3. Place tests in test/registered/<category>/ — including JIT kernel tests and benchmarks, which live in test/registered/jit/ and test/registered/jit/benchmark/ (nested subfolders are allowed)
4. Reuse server fixtures — inherit from DefaultServerBase or write setUpClass/tearDownClass with popen_launch_server
5. Prefer mock over real server — when testing logic that doesn't need a server / engine launch (middleware, request routing, config validation, argument parsing), use unittest.mock.patch / MagicMock and place tests in test/registered/unit/. Only launch a real server when the test genuinely needs inference results or server lifecycle behavior.

JIT kernel notes:

• If the task is adding or updating code under python/sglang/jit_kernel/, prefer the add-jit-kernel skill first.
• JIT kernel correctness tests use test/registered/jit/**/test_*.py.
• JIT kernel benchmarks use test/registered/jit/benchmark/**/bench_*.py.
• Those files are executed by test/run_suite.py through dedicated kernel suites (base-b-kernel-*); a register_*_ci(...) call placed under python/sglang/ is rejected by the check-no-registered-tests-in-package pre-commit hook.

---

Model & Backend Selection

Scenario	Model	CI Registration	Suite
Unit tests (no server / engine launch)	None	register_cpu_ci (prefer) or register_cuda_ci	base-a-test-cpu or base-b-test-1-gpu-small
Common / backend-independent (middleware, abort, routing, config, arg parsing)	DEFAULT_SMALL_MODEL_NAME_FOR_TEST (1B)	register_cuda_ci only	base-b-test-1-gpu-small
Model-agnostic functionality (sampling, session, OpenAI API features)	DEFAULT_SMALL_MODEL_NAME_FOR_TEST (1B)	register_cuda_ci (+ AMD if relevant)	base-b-test-1-gpu-small
General performance (single node, no spec/DP/parallelism)	DEFAULT_MODEL_NAME_FOR_TEST (8B)	register_cuda_ci	base-b-test-1-gpu-large
Bigger features (spec, DP, TP, disaggregation)	Case by case	Case by case	See suite table below

Key principle for E2E tests: Do NOT add register_amd_ci unless the test specifically exercises AMD/ROCm code paths. Common E2E tests just need any GPU to run — duplicating across backends wastes CI time with no extra coverage.

All model constants

Defined in python/sglang/test/test_utils.py:

Constant	Model	When to use
DEFAULT_SMALL_MODEL_NAME_FOR_TEST	Llama-3.2-1B-Instruct	Common features, model-agnostic tests
DEFAULT_SMALL_MODEL_NAME_FOR_TEST_BASE	Llama-3.2-1B	Base (non-instruct) model tests
DEFAULT_MODEL_NAME_FOR_TEST	Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct	General performance (single node)
DEFAULT_MOE_MODEL_NAME_FOR_TEST	Mixtral-8x7B-Instruct	MoE-specific tests
DEFAULT_SMALL_EMBEDDING_MODEL_NAME_FOR_TEST	—	Embedding tests
DEFAULT_SMALL_VLM_MODEL_NAME_FOR_TEST	—	Vision-language tests

Naming Conventions

A per-commit suite name is generated from registration metadata as {stage}-test-{runner_config} — you don't hand-write it:

• stage — the CI stage (e.g. base-b, base-b-kernel-unit, base-c).
• runner_config — a runner-pool key from scripts/ci/runner_configs.yml, which maps it to the physical runner label (so 1-gpu-large runs on 1-gpu-h100). AMD/NPU use their own keys (e.g. amd).
• Suite — register_cuda_ci(stage="base-b", runner_config="1-gpu-small") → base-b-test-1-gpu-small, the name you pass to run_suite.py --suite. The -test- is just the connector; never put it in register_*_ci.

Legacy single-string suite= is only for suites that don't fit that shape — nightly/stress/weekly and some AMD/CPU/NPU pools (e.g. suite="nightly-kernel-1-gpu", nightly=True). Per-commit tests always use stage= + runner_config=.

All CI Suites

Per-commit (CUDA)

Suite	Runner (label)	Description
base-a-test-1-gpu-small	1-gpu-5090	Quick checks on a small NVIDIA GPU before heavier stages
base-a-test-cpu	ubuntu-latest	CPU-only unit tests
base-b-test-1-gpu-small	1-gpu-5090	Core engine tests that fit a 5090-class card
base-b-test-1-gpu-large	1-gpu-h100	Tests that need H100-class memory or kernels (e.g. FA3)
base-b-test-2-gpu-large	2-gpu-h100	Two-GPU correctness and parallelism (TP/PP) on H100
base-b-test-4-gpu-b200	4-gpu-b200	Early Blackwell coverage (SM100+ paths) on four GPUs
base-b-kernel-unit-test-1-gpu-large	1-gpu-h100	JIT kernel correctness tests under test/registered/jit/
base-b-kernel-unit-test-4-gpu-b200	4-gpu-b200	JIT kernel correctness tests for Blackwell / SM100-specific paths
base-b-kernel-unit-test-8-gpu-h200	8-gpu-h200	Multi-GPU JIT kernel correctness tests under test/registered/jit/
base-b-kernel-benchmark-test-1-gpu-large	1-gpu-h100	JIT kernel benchmark files under test/registered/jit/benchmark/
base-c-test-4-gpu-h100	4-gpu-h100	Large 4-GPU H100 integration and scaling tests
base-c-test-8-gpu-h200	8-gpu-h200	Large 8-GPU H200 runs for big models and parallelism
base-c-test-8-gpu-h20	8-gpu-h20	Large 8-GPU H20 runs for big models
base-c-test-deepep-4-gpu-h100	4-gpu-h100	DeepEP expert-parallel and networking on four H100s
base-c-test-8-gpu-b200	8-gpu-b200	8-GPU B200 suite (registered but not yet wired to a workflow)
base-c-test-4-gpu-b200	4-gpu-b200	4-GPU B200 suite for large models on Blackwell
base-c-test-4-gpu-b200-small	4-gpu-b200	Smaller 4-GPU B200 suite split onto low-disk B200 runners
base-c-test-4-gpu-gb200	4-gpu-gb200	4-GPU GB200 suite for Grace Blackwell; registered in run_suite.py, but the PR workflow is currently disabled until a runner is provisioned

Per-commit (AMD)

Suite	Runner (label)	Description
stage-a-test-1-gpu-small-amd	linux-mi325-1gpu-sglang	Quick checks on one MI325-class GPU
stage-b-test-1-gpu-small-amd	linux-mi325-1gpu-sglang	Core 1-GPU AMD tests (14 partitions)
stage-b-test-1-gpu-small-amd-nondeterministic	linux-mi325-1gpu-sglang	Non-deterministic 1-GPU AMD tests
stage-b-test-1-gpu-small-amd-mi35x	linux-mi35x-gpu-1	1-GPU tests on MI35x hardware
stage-b-test-1-gpu-large-amd	linux-mi325-1gpu-sglang	Large 1-GPU AMD tests (2 partitions)
stage-b-test-2-gpu-large-amd	linux-mi325-2gpu-sglang	2-GPU ROCm correctness and parallel setups
stage-b-test-large-8-gpu-mi35x-disaggregation-amd	linux-mi35x-gpu-8.fabric	PD disaggregation and RDMA on 8×MI35x fabric
stage-c-test-4-gpu-amd	linux-mi325-4gpu-sglang	4-GPU AMD integration (2 partitions)
stage-c-test-large-8-gpu-amd	linux-mi325-8gpu-sglang	8-GPU MI325 scaling and integration
stage-c-test-large-8-gpu-amd-mi35x	linux-mi35x-gpu-8	8-GPU MI35x scaling (2 partitions)

Per-commit (Ascend NPU)

Suite	Runner (label)	Description
per-commit-1-npu-a2	linux-aarch64-a2-1	1-NPU LLM CI machine
per-commit-2-npu-a2	linux-aarch64-a2-2	2-NPU LLM CI machine
per-commit-4-npu-a3	linux-aarch64-a3-4	4-NPU LLM CI machine
per-commit-16-npu-a3	linux-aarch64-a3-16	16-NPU LLM CI machine
multimodal-gen-test-1-npu-a3	linux-aarch64-a3-2	1-NPU multimodal CI machine
multimodal-gen-test-2-npu-a3	linux-aarch64-a3-16	2-NPU multimodal CI machine
multimodal-gen-test-8-npu-a3	linux-aarch64-a3-16	8-NPU multimodal CI machine

Nightly

Nightly suites are listed in NIGHTLY_SUITES in test/run_suite.py. They run via nightly-test-nvidia.yml, nightly-test-amd.yml, and nightly-test-npu.yml, not pr-test.yml. Examples:

• nightly-1-gpu (CUDA)
• nightly-kernel-1-gpu (CUDA, JIT kernel full grids)
• nightly-kernel-8-gpu-h200 (CUDA, multi-GPU JIT kernel nightly)
• nightly-8-gpu-h200 (CUDA)
• nightly-eval-vlm-2-gpu (CUDA)
• nightly-amd (AMD)
• nightly-amd-8-gpu-mi35x (AMD)
• nightly-1-npu-a3 (NPU)
• nightly-2-npu-a3 (NPU)
• nightly-4-npu-a3 (NPU)
• nightly-8-npu-a3 (NPU)
• nightly-16-npu-a3 (NPU)

Note: Multimodal diffusion uses python/sglang/multimodal_gen/test/run_suite.py, not test/run_suite.py.

Choosing a Suite

Use the lightest suite that meets your test's needs:

• No GPU required → base-a-test-cpu
• Most small GPU tests → base-b-test-1-gpu-small (default choice)
• Need H100 memory or Hopper features → base-b-test-1-gpu-large
• JIT kernel correctness → base-b-kernel-unit-test-1-gpu-large
• JIT kernel correctness for B200 / SM100 paths → base-b-kernel-unit-test-4-gpu-b200
• JIT kernel benchmarks → base-b-kernel-benchmark-test-1-gpu-large
• Multi-GPU → only when the test actually needs multiple GPUs

---

Test File Templates

Unit Tests (no server / engine launch)

See test/registered/unit/README.md for quick-start and rules. Unit tests live in test/registered/unit/, mirroring python/sglang/srt/:

"""Unit tests for srt/<module>"""

import unittest
from unittest.mock import MagicMock, patch

from sglang.srt.<module> import TargetClass
from sglang.test.ci.ci_register import register_cpu_ci
from sglang.test.test_utils import CustomTestCase

register_cpu_ci(est_time=5, suite="base-a-test-cpu")
# Prefer CPU. Only use register_cuda_ci when the test truly needs a GPU.

class TestTargetClass(CustomTestCase):
    def test_basic_behavior(self):
        obj = TargetClass(...)
        self.assertEqual(obj.method(), expected)

    @patch("sglang.srt.<module>.some_dependency")
    def test_with_mock(self, mock_dep):
        mock_dep.return_value = MagicMock()
        # test logic with dependency mocked
        ...


if __name__ == "__main__":
    unittest.main()

Use unittest.mock.patch / MagicMock to mock dependencies and isolate the logic under test. If the module transitively imports GPU-only packages (e.g. sgl_kernel), they can be stubbed so the test runs on CPU CI. Do not modify sys.modules at module level — use patch.dict (as a class decorator or with start/stop) to ensure cleanup and avoid cross-test pollution. See test/registered/unit/README.md for details and examples.

Quality bar — test real logic (validation boundaries, state transitions, error paths, branching, etc.). Skip tests that just verify Python itself works (e.g., "does calling an abstract method raise NotImplementedError?", "does a dataclass store the field I assigned?"). Consolidate repetitive patterns into parameterized tests. No production code changes in test PRs.

E2E test (small model, server needed)

import unittest

import requests

from sglang.srt.utils import kill_process_tree
from sglang.test.ci.ci_register import register_cuda_ci
from sglang.test.test_utils import (
    DEFAULT_SMALL_MODEL_NAME_FOR_TEST,
    DEFAULT_TIMEOUT_FOR_SERVER_LAUNCH,
    DEFAULT_URL_FOR_TEST,
    CustomTestCase,
    popen_launch_server,
)

register_cuda_ci(est_time=60, suite="base-b-test-1-gpu-small")


class TestMyFeature(CustomTestCase):
    @classmethod
    def setUpClass(cls):
        cls.model = DEFAULT_SMALL_MODEL_NAME_FOR_TEST
        cls.base_url = DEFAULT_URL_FOR_TEST
        cls.process = popen_launch_server(
            cls.model,
            cls.base_url,
            timeout=DEFAULT_TIMEOUT_FOR_SERVER_LAUNCH,
            other_args=["--arg1", "value1"],  # feature-specific args
        )

    @classmethod
    def tearDownClass(cls):
        if hasattr(cls, "process") and cls.process:
            kill_process_tree(cls.process.pid)

    def test_basic_functionality(self):
        response = requests.post(
            self.base_url + "/generate",
            json={"text": "Hello", "sampling_params": {"max_new_tokens": 32}},
        )
        self.assertEqual(response.status_code, 200)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    unittest.main(verbosity=3)

E2E test (8B model, server needed, performance)

import time
import unittest

import requests

from sglang.srt.utils import kill_process_tree
from sglang.test.ci.ci_register import register_cuda_ci
from sglang.test.test_utils import (
    DEFAULT_MODEL_NAME_FOR_TEST,
    DEFAULT_TIMEOUT_FOR_SERVER_LAUNCH,
    DEFAULT_URL_FOR_TEST,
    CustomTestCase,
    popen_launch_server,
)

register_cuda_ci(est_time=300, suite="base-b-test-1-gpu-large")


class TestMyFeaturePerf(CustomTestCase):
    @classmethod
    def setUpClass(cls):
        cls.model = DEFAULT_MODEL_NAME_FOR_TEST
        cls.base_url = DEFAULT_URL_FOR_TEST
        cls.process = popen_launch_server(
            cls.model,
            cls.base_url,
            timeout=DEFAULT_TIMEOUT_FOR_SERVER_LAUNCH,
        )

    @classmethod
    def tearDownClass(cls):
        if hasattr(cls, "process") and cls.process:
            kill_process_tree(cls.process.pid)

    def test_latency(self):
        start = time.perf_counter()
        response = requests.post(
            self.base_url + "/generate",
            json={"text": "Hello", "sampling_params": {"max_new_tokens": 128}},
        )
        elapsed = time.perf_counter() - start
        self.assertEqual(response.status_code, 200)
        self.assertLess(elapsed, 5.0, "Latency exceeded threshold")


if __name__ == "__main__":
    unittest.main(verbosity=3)

---

Server Fixture Reuse

For tests that only need a standard server, inherit from DefaultServerBase and override class attributes:

from sglang.test.server_fixtures.default_fixture import DefaultServerBase

class TestMyFeature(DefaultServerBase):
    model = DEFAULT_SMALL_MODEL_NAME_FOR_TEST
    other_args = ["--enable-my-feature"]

    def test_something(self):
        ...

Available fixtures in python/sglang/test/server_fixtures/:

Fixture	Use case
DefaultServerBase	Standard single-server tests
EagleServerBase	EAGLE speculative decoding
PDDisaggregationServerBase	Disaggregated prefill/decode
MMMUServerBase	Multimodal VLM tests

---

CI Registration

Every CI-discovered test file must call a registration function at module level:

from sglang.test.ci.ci_register import (
    register_cuda_ci,
    register_amd_ci,
    register_cpu_ci,
    register_npu_ci,
)

# Per-commit test (small 1-gpu, runs on 5090)
register_cuda_ci(est_time=80, suite="base-b-test-1-gpu-small")

# Per-commit test (large 1-gpu, runs on H100)
register_cuda_ci(est_time=120, suite="base-b-test-1-gpu-large")

# Nightly-only test
register_cuda_ci(est_time=200, suite="nightly-1-gpu", nightly=True)

# Multi-backend test (only when testing backend-specific code paths)
register_cuda_ci(est_time=80, suite="base-a-test-1-gpu-small")
register_amd_ci(est_time=120, suite="stage-a-test-1-gpu-small-amd")
register_npu_ci(est_time=400, suite="nightly-8-npu-a3", nightly=True)

# Temporarily disabled test
register_cuda_ci(est_time=80, suite="base-b-test-1-gpu-small", disabled="flaky - see #12345")

Parameters:

• est_time: estimated runtime in seconds (used for CI partitioning)
• suite: which CI suite to run in (see suite tables above)
• nightly=True: for nightly-only tests (default False = per-commit)
• disabled="reason": temporarily disable with explanation

Key principle: Only add register_amd_ci / register_npu_ci when the test exercises backend-specific code paths. Common E2E tests just need register_cuda_ci — duplicating across backends wastes CI time.

JIT Kernel Registration

JIT kernel files live outside test/registered/ but still use registration:

from sglang.test.ci.ci_register import register_cuda_ci

# Correctness tests in test/registered/jit/
register_cuda_ci(est_time=30, stage="base-b-kernel-unit", runner_config="1-gpu-large")
register_cuda_ci(est_time=30, stage="base-b-kernel-unit", runner_config="4-gpu-b200")
register_cuda_ci(est_time=120, stage="base-b-kernel-unit", runner_config="8-gpu-h200")

# Benchmarks in test/registered/jit/benchmark/
register_cuda_ci(est_time=6, stage="base-b-kernel-benchmark", runner_config="1-gpu-large")

# Optional nightly registration — nightly suites use the legacy single-string suite=
register_cuda_ci(est_time=120, suite="nightly-kernel-1-gpu", nightly=True)
register_cuda_ci(est_time=120, suite="nightly-kernel-8-gpu-h200", nightly=True)

The stage + runner_config calls generate suites like base-b-kernel-unit-test-1-gpu-large; nightly keeps the legacy suite= string. Keep est_time, stage, runner_config, and suite as literal values — run_suite.py collects them by AST parsing.

---

Test Placement

test/
├── registered/          # CI tests (auto-discovered by run_suite.py)
│   ├── unit/            # No server / engine launch (see test/registered/unit/README.md)
│   ├── kernels/         # CUDA kernel correctness (no server, GPU required)
│   ├── sampling/        # test_penalty.py, test_sampling_params.py ...
│   ├── sessions/        # test_session_control.py ...
│   ├── openai_server/   # basic/, features/, validation/ ...
│   ├── spec/            # eagle/, utils/ ...
│   ├── models/          # model-specific accuracy tests
│   ├── perf/            # performance benchmarks
│   └── <category>/      # create new category if needed
├── manual/              # Non-CI: debugging, one-off, manual verification
└── run_suite.py         # CI runner (scans registered/ plus jit_kernel test/benchmark files)

python/sglang/jit_kernel/
├── tests/               # JIT kernel correctness tests (CI-discovered by test/run_suite.py)
└── benchmark/           # JIT kernel benchmarks (CI-discovered by test/run_suite.py)

Decision rule (see also test/registered/README.md):

• Component logic, no server → registered/unit/
• JIT kernel correctness / benchmarks → test/registered/jit/ or test/registered/jit/benchmark/
• Other kernel correctness → registered/kernels/
• Server needed → registered/<category>/
• Local debugging → manual/

---

Eval Accuracy Mixins

Design philosophy: Most test files don't care about eval logic — they only need a "does this feature break model output quality?" sanity check. The mixin pattern separates what to test (threshold) from how to test (run_eval, assertions, CI summary). Test classes declare thresholds as class attributes; the mixin provides the test_* method. Override when you need extra assertions (e.g. EAGLE accept length).

Available mixins in python/sglang/test/kits/eval_accuracy_kit.py: MMLUMixin, HumanEvalMixin, MGSMEnMixin, GSM8KMixin. Can be combined freely. Read the source for attrs and defaults.

class TestMyFeature(CustomTestCase, MMLUMixin):
    mmlu_score_threshold = 0.65
    mmlu_num_examples = 64
    mmlu_num_threads = 32
    # test_mmlu is inherited — no code needed

---

Key Utilities

from sglang.test.test_utils import (
    CustomTestCase,              # base class with retry logic
    popen_launch_server,         # launch server subprocess
    DEFAULT_URL_FOR_TEST,        # auto-configured base URL
    DEFAULT_TIMEOUT_FOR_SERVER_LAUNCH,  # 600s default
    run_bench_serving,           # benchmark helper (launch + bench)
)
from sglang.srt.utils import kill_process_tree  # cleanup server

---

Checklist

Before submitting a test:

• Inherits from CustomTestCase (not unittest.TestCase)
• Has register_*_ci(...) call at module level
• Placed in test/registered/<category>/ (JIT kernel test/benchmark → test/registered/jit/ or test/registered/jit/benchmark/)
• JIT kernel work: test files live in test/registered/jit/; only test-only helpers stay under python/sglang/jit_kernel/
• Backend-independent tests: register_cuda_ci only + smallest model
• Logic that doesn't need a server / engine launch → unit test in registered/unit/ (see Unit Tests section)
• setUpClass launches server, tearDownClass kills it (if server-based)
• tearDownClass is defensive — uses hasattr/null checks before accessing resources that may not have been allocated
• Has if __name__ == "__main__": unittest.main()
• est_time is reasonable (measure locally)