Avocado is a test framework that is built on the experience accumulated with autotest, while improving on its weaknesses and shortcomings.

The main goal of the Avocado project is to provide a set of smart tools for automated testing and continuous integration. Among them, we can highlight:

• A powerful test runner;
• A multiplexer that allows tests to be run with different sets of variables;
• Test APIs for test writers;
• A database for results, with a web interface;
• A scheduler for setting up a test grid.

An extensive set of slides about avocado, including details about its architecture, main features and status is available in google-drive.

The most straightforward way of using avocado is to install packages available for your distro:

1. Fedora

   To use the latest version of avocado, or to use it while it's not officially packaged in Fedora yet, you should use Avocado's copr repository.

Once you install it, you can start exploring it by checking the output of avocado --help and the test runner man-page, accessible via man avocado.

If you want to develop avocado, or run it directly from the git repository, you have a couple of options:

1. The avocado test runner was designed to run in tree, for rapid development prototypes. Just use:

   $ scripts/avocado --help
   

2. Installing avocado in the system is also an option, although remember that distutils has no uninstall functionality:

   $ sudo python setup.py install
   $ avocado --help
   

Avocado comes with in tree documentation about the most advanced features and its API. It can be built with sphinx, but a publicly available build of the latest master branch documentation and releases can be seen on read the docs:

http://avocado-framework.readthedocs.org/

If you want to build the documentation yourself:

1. Make sure you have the package python-sphinx installed. For Fedora:

   $ sudo yum install python-sphinx
   

2. For Mint/Ubuntu/Debian:

   $ sudo apt-get install python-sphinx
   

3. Optionally, you can install the read the docs theme, that will make your in-tree documentation look just like the online version:

   $ sudo pip install sphinx_rtd_theme
   

4. Build the docs:

   $ make -C docs html
   

5. Once done, point your browser to:

   $ [your-browser] docs/build/html/index.html