FIDL compatibility test

The FIDL compatibility test is an integration test for compatibility of different FIDL bindings.

How it works

• A “host” server, written in HLCPP, starts “language servers” in each of the languages that have FIDL bindings for.
• The host server is only implemented in HLCPP.

How compatibility_test does testing:

1. The host server sends a message to language server 1.
2. Language server 1 forwards that message to language server 2.
3. Language server 2 echoes the message back to language server 1.
4. Language server 1 sends the message back to the host.

In short, compatibility_test sends messages in the following way:

host to language server 1, then to language server 2, then back to language server 1, and finally back to the host

The message that is sent is a huge FIDL struct that is designed to exercise encoding and decoding of every FIDL data type. See compatibility_service.test.fidl for the entry point.

By default, compatibility_test will set up every possible combination of pairs of language servers defined.

For a test instance, there is:

• HLCPP host server
• Language server 1
• Language server 2

So, if the language list is Go, Dart, and Rust, the following combinations of servers will be tested:

• HLCPP and Go, Go and Dart
• HLCPP and Dart, Dart and Go
• HLCPP and Go, Go and Rust
• HLCPP and Rust, Rust and Go
• HLCPP and Dart, Dart and Rust
• HLCPP and Rust, Rust and Dart

The basic logic for the test is along the lines of:

servers = ['go_server', 'cc_server', ...]

for proxy_name in servers:
  for server_name in servers:
    proxy = <connect to proxy>
    struct = <construct complicated struct>
    resp = proxy.EchoStruct(struct, server_name)
    assert_equal(struct, resp)

Servers should implement the service defined in compatibility_service.test.fidl with logic along the lines of:

def EchoStruct(
    Struct value, string forward_to_server, EchoStructCallback callback):
  if value.forward_to_server:
    other_server = <start server with LaunchPad>
    # set forward_to_server to "" to prevent recursion
    other_server.EchoStruct(value, "", callback)
  else:
    callback(value)

The logic for EchoStructNoRetVal() is similar. Instead of waiting for a response directly, the test waits to receive an EchoEvent(). And instead of calling the client back directly, the server sends the EchoEvent().

The code for the compatibility tests are located at src/tests/fidl/compatibility. It contains FIDL definitions and the server implementations for Dart, HLCPP, LLCPP, Rust, and Go.

The test runner and all of the test server components are in a single package, fuchsia-pkg://fuchsia.com/fidl-compatibility-test.

Running

Beacuse individual tests have timeouts the test is split across 5 different components in the same package:

• fuchsia-pkg://fuchsia.com/fidl-compatibility-test#meta/fidl_compatibility_test_struct.cmx
• fuchsia-pkg://fuchsia.com/fidl-compatibility-test#meta/fidl_compatibility_test_array.cmx
• fuchsia-pkg://fuchsia.com/fidl-compatibility-test#meta/fidl_compatibility_test_vector.cmx
• fuchsia-pkg://fuchsia.com/fidl-compatibility-test#meta/fidl_compatibility_test_table.cmx
• fuchsia-pkg://fuchsia.com/fidl-compatibility-test#meta/fidl_compatibility_test_union.cmx

They all invoke the same test runner but use a --gtest_filter argument to filter which tests are run.

To run all of the tests:

fx test fidl_compatibility_test

Or to run a specific test:

fx test "fuchsia-pkg://fuchsia.com/fidl-compatibility-test#meta/fidl_compatibility_test_struct.cmx"

And if you want to run a specific test case:

fx test "fuchsia-pkg://fuchsia.com/fidl-compatibility-test#meta/fidl_compatibility_test_struct.cmx" \
  -- --gtest_filter=Struct.EchoStructNoRetval

Debugging

There are virtually no debugging messages apart from “failed” when one of the language bindings fails to decode a message, which means that a lot of patching in language bindings to dump the raw wire format bytes or a tool like fidlcat is required to troubleshoot. A language binding failing decoding may be due to a bug in the decoder of the receiver or a bug in the encoder in the sender.

To use fidlcat:

fx fidlcat --remote-name=fidl

Then, run compatibility_test. Note: fidlcat will block until compatibility_test is launched.