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Testing

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

Layer Where Mark / Tool Hardware
Unit tests tests/robot/, tests/sim/ pytest -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 (pytest -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/) and is re-exported through thin proxy files in tests/robot/ for centralized discovery.

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

Unit tests run as part of system-tests.yml via pytest tests/ and can also be run locally with no Docker or GPU needed.

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

System tests (tests/system/)

Full Docker-stack integration tests. The canonical reference is tests/README.md. In short:

Mark Module Role
liveliness system/test_liveliness.py Containers, /clock readiness, tmux, sentinel ROS 2 nodes, compute, infra-only stability poll
sensors system/test_sensors.py Sim + robot stereo/depth Hz, filtered LiDAR (echo --once + validation script on Isaac), sim RTF, sensor stability time-series
takeoff_hover_land system/test_takeoff_hover_land.py Four-phase flight chain per configuration

Collection order is defined in tests/conftest.py (liveliness before sensors before takeoff_hover_land). Each mark's test class uses class-scoped airstack_env, so combining marks with and 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.

Other testing docs