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Testing

AirStack uses several complementary test layers, each with a distinct scope and hardware requirement:

Layer Where Mark / Tool Hardware
Unit tests <pkg>/test/ (co-located) airstack test -m unit None — pure Python
Package tests <pkg>/test/ colcon test Robot container
System tests tests/system/ pytest -m liveliness etc. Docker, GPU, sim license

Unit tests (airstack test -m unit)

Fast, hermetic Python tests that run in seconds with no Docker or GPU. Test source lives co-located with its ROS 2 package (<package>/test/); the packages with unit tests are listed in tests/colcon_unit_test_packages.yaml, and the root harness collects them from there.

airstack test -m unit -v
# or directly:
pytest tests/ -m unit -v

Unit tests run automatically on every update to PRs targeting main or develop through unit-tests.yml on ubuntu-latest, and can also be run locally with no Docker or GPU needed.

→ Unit Testing Guide — patterns, CI workflow, how to add tests for new packages (Python and C++ gtest).

System tests (tests/system/)

Full Docker-stack integration tests, selected by pytest mark — from cheap build gates (build_docker, build_packages) through stack bring-up (liveliness, wiring, sensors) to full flight campaigns (takeoff_hover_land, autonomy, waypoint_flight). The canonical mark reference — what each mark runs and verifies — is tests/README.md.

Collection order is defined in tests/conftest.py (unit tests first, then build_docker → build_packages → liveliness → sensors → takeoff_hover_land → test_fixed_trajectory). Each mark's test class uses class-scoped airstack_env, so combining marks with or runs multiple full stack bring-ups per (sim, num_robots, iteration) — see Bring-up scope in tests/README.md.

Isaac Sim: the sensors implementation batches ros2 topic hz on sim and robot paths and avoids hz on filtered PointCloud2; pytest enables ENABLE_LIDAR for the multi-drone Pegasus script. Details: tests/README.md → Isaac Sim and the sensors mark.

Prerequisites

All system tests share the same setup:

cd /path/to/AirStack
airstack setup
  • Docker daemon (user in docker group)
  • NVIDIA GPU + nvidia-container-toolkit for sim tests
  • Isaac Sim: simulation/isaac-sim/docker/omni_pass.env configured

End-to-end testing

For the full guide — e2e overview, the fixed-trajectory benchmark, metrics, CLI, comparing trackers, and baselines — see End-to-End Testing.

Quick smoke test:

airstack test -m "build_packages or autonomy" \
  --sim isaacsim \
  --num-robots 1 \
  --stress-iterations 1 \
  --trajectory-types Circle \
  -v

Other testing docs