Testing Blog
The Google Test and Development Environment - Pt. 3: Code, Build, and Test
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
by
Anthony Vallone
This is the third in a series of articles about our work environment. See the
first
and
second
.
I will never forget the awe I felt when running my first load test on my first project at Google. At previous companies I’ve worked, running a substantial load test took quite a bit of resource planning and preparation. At Google, I wrote less than 100 lines of code and was simulating tens of thousands of users after just minutes of prep work. The ease with which I was able to accomplish this is due to the impressive coding, building, and testing tools available at Google. In this article, I will discuss these tools and how they affect our test and development process.
Coding and building
The tools and process for coding and building make it very easy to change production and test code. Even though we are a large company, we have managed to remain nimble. In a matter of minutes or hours, you can edit, test, review, and submit code to head. We have achieved this without sacrificing code quality by heavily investing in tools, testing, and infrastructure, and by prioritizing code reviews.
Most production and test code is in a single, company-wide source control repository (open source projects like Chromium and Android have their own). There is a great deal of code sharing in the codebase, and this provides an incredible suite of code to build on. Most code is also in a single branch, so the majority of development is done at head. All code is also navigable, searchable, and editable from the browser. You’ll find code in numerous languages, but Java, C++, Python, Go, and JavaScript are the most common.
Have a strong preference for editor? Engineers are free to choose from many IDEs and editors. The most common are Eclipse, Emacs, Vim, and IntelliJ, but many others are used as well. Engineers that are passionate about their prefered editors have built up and shared some truly impressive editor plugins/tooling over the years.
Code reviews for all submissions are enforced via source control tooling. This also applies to test code, as our test code is held to the same standards as production code. The reviews are done via web-based code review tools that even include automatically generated test results. The process is very streamlined and efficient. Engineers can change and submit code in any part of the repository, but it must get reviewed by owners of the code being changed. This is great, because you can easily change code that your team depends on, rather than merely request a change to code you do not own.
The
Google build system
is used for building most code, and it is designed to work across many languages and platforms. It is remarkably simple to define and build targets. You won’t be needing that old Makefile book.
Running jobs and tests
We have some pretty amazing machine and job management tools at Google. There is a generally available pool of machines in many data centers around the globe. The job management service makes it very easy to start jobs on arbitrary machines in any of these data centers. Failing machines are automatically removed from the pool, so tests rarely fail due to machine issues. With a little effort, you can also set up monitoring and pager alerting for your important jobs.
From any machine you can spin up a massive number of tests and run them in parallel across many machines in the pool, via a single command. Each of these tests are run in a standard, isolated environment, so we rarely run into the “it works on my machine!” issue.
Before code is submitted,
presubmit
tests can be run that will find all tests that depend transitively on the change and run them. You can also define presubmit rules that run checks on a code change and verify that tests were run before allowing submission.
Once you’ve submitted test code, the build and test system automatically registers the test, and starts building/testing continuously. If the test starts failing, your team will get notification emails. You can also visit a test dashboard for your team and get details about test runs and test data. Monitoring the build/test status is made even easier with our build orbs designed and built by Googlers. These small devices will glow red if the build starts failing. Many teams have had fun customizing these orbs to various shapes, including a statue of liberty with a glowing torch.
Statue of LORBerty
Running larger integration and end-to-end tests takes a little more work, but we have some excellent tools to help with these tests as well: Integration test runners, hermetic environment creation, virtual machine service, web test frameworks, etc.
The impact
So how do these tools actually affect our productivity? For starters, the code is easy to find, edit, review, and submit. Engineers are free to choose tools that make them most productive. Before and after submission, running small tests is trivial, and running large tests is relatively easy. Since tests are easy to create and run, it’s fairly simple to maintain a green build, which most teams do most of the time. This allows us to spend more time on real problems and less on the things that shouldn’t even be problems. It allows us to focus on creating rigorous tests. It dramatically accelerates the development process that can
prototype Gmail in a day
and code/test/release service features on a daily schedule. And, of course, it lets us focus on the fun stuff.
Thoughts?
We are interested to hear your thoughts on this topic. Google has the resources to build tools like this, but would small or medium size companies benefit from a similar investment in its infrastructure? Did Google create the infrastructure or did the infrastructure create Google?
8 comments
The Google Test and Development Environment - Pt. 2: Dogfooding and Office Software
Friday, January 03, 2014
by
Anthony Vallone
This is the second in a series of articles about our work environment. See the
first
.
There are few things as frustrating as getting hampered in your work by a bug in a product you depend on. What if it’s a product developed by your company? Do you report/fix the issue or just work around it and hope it’ll go away soon? In this article, I’ll cover how and why Google
dogfoods
its own products.
Dogfooding
Google makes heavy use of its own products. We have a large ecosystem of development/office tools and use them for nearly everything we do. Because we use them on a daily basis, we can dogfood releases company-wide before launching to the public. These dogfood versions often have features unavailable to the public but may be less stable. Instability is exactly what you want in your tools, right? Or, would you rather that frustration be passed on to your company’s customers? Of course not!
Dogfooding is an important part of our test process. Test teams do their best to find problems before dogfooding, but we all know that testing is never perfect. We often get dogfood bug reports for edge and corner cases not initially covered by testing. We also get many comments about overall product quality and usability. This internal feedback has, on many occasions, changed product design.
Not surprisingly, test-focused engineers often have a lot to say during the dogfood phase. I don’t think there is a single public-facing product that I have not reported bugs on. I really appreciate the fact that I can provide feedback on so many products before release.
Interested in helping to test Google products? Many of our products have feedback links built-in. Some also have Beta releases available. For example, you can start using
Chrome Beta
and help us file bugs.
Office software
From system design documents, to test plans, to discussions about beer brewing techniques, our products are used internally. A company’s choice of office tools can have a big impact on productivity, and it is fortunate for Google that we have such a comprehensive suite. The tools have a consistently simple UI (no manual required), perform very well, encourage collaboration, and auto-save in the cloud. Now that I am used to these tools, I would certainly have a hard time going back to the tools of previous companies I have worked. I’m sure I would forget to click the save buttons for years to come.
Examples of frequently used tools by engineers:
Google Drive Apps
(Docs, Sheets, Slides, etc.) are used for design documents, test plans, project data, data analysis, presentations, and more.
Gmail
and
Hangouts
are used for email and chat.
Google Calendar
is used to schedule all meetings, reserve conference rooms, and setup video conferencing using Hangouts.
Google Maps
is used to map office floors.
Google Groups
are used for email lists.
Google Sites
are used to host team pages, engineering docs, and more.
Google App Engine
hosts many corporate, development, and test apps.
Chrome
is our primary browser on all platforms.
Google+
is used for organizing internal communities on topics such as food or C++, and for socializing.
Thoughts?
We are interested to hear your thoughts on this topic. Do you dogfood your company’s products? Do your office tools help or hinder your productivity? What office software and tools do you find invaluable for your job? Could you use Google Docs/Sheets for large test plans?
(Continue to part 3)
12 comments
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