Files
home-network-k3s-impl/conformance
jakman85andClaude Opus 5 78d0f1b0f6 feat(ci): promtool in the pinned toolchain, one alert-rule harness, and the gaps declared
The CNPG alert unit tests (324 lines, mutation-checked) were run by NOTHING. promtool was
not in the baked toolchain, no gate stage evaluated any *.promtool-test.yaml, and the only
runner `curl | tar -xz`'d a promtool release from GitHub at TEST-RUN time if one was
missing. Hours later a second, independent harness landed for the Velero rules
(platform/monitoring/tests/) with its own fallback — a `podman run` of
quay.io/prometheus/prometheus. So the repo had two harnesses, two acquisition paths, and
coverage that looked present and was enforced nowhere: the exact failure mode that had just
produced a permanently-firing CNPG alert and a structurally inert Velero alert.

PROMTOOL IS NOW PINNED LIKE EVERY OTHER TOOL. PROMTOOL_VERSION=3.14.0 in
infra/devcontainer/versions.env and ci/versions.env (the two stay in lockstep, per the
repo's rule), baked by the Containerfile from the prometheus release tarball (promtool ships
inside it), recorded in /etc/dev-toolchain-versions, passed by dev.sh, and installed for the
l0 stage by .gitea/workflows/scripts/install-tools.sh so the CI runner is not permanently
SKIPPED. The pin is not free-floating: promtool IS the rule engine, so it tracks the
Prometheus prod actually runs — verified against the live cluster, not assumed:

    kubectl --context k3s-prod get prometheus -n monitoring -o jsonpath='{.items[*].spec.version}'
      -> v3.14.0-distroless   (image quay.io/prometheus/prometheus:v3.14.0-distroless)

ONE HARNESS. platform/cnpg/run-alert-tests.sh is folded into
platform/monitoring/tests/run.sh, which now covers every PrometheusRule in the repo that has
tests, via two conventions it discovers automatically: `<manifest>.promtool-test.yaml`
beside its manifest (cnpg), and `<component>/tests/*.test.yaml` over that component's
manifests (monitoring). It writes the flattened rules under whatever name each test file's
own `rule_files:` declares, so no test file needs to know the harness exists, and it
`promtool check rules` first — a rules file that does not parse would make every unit test
pass vacuously by finding no rules at all. The cnpg script's reasoning is preserved: why a
CR must be flattened (`.spec.groups`, never re-typed), and why generated files go to a temp
dir. Its `${BASE_DOMAIN}` substitution is dropped in favour of extract_rules.py's verbatim
placeholders, with the trade-off recorded there — the hazard it guarded against is addressed
by the temp dir, and verbatim leaves one transformation fewer between the shipped rule and
the rule under test.

NO ENGINE IS ACQUIRED AT RUN TIME any more — not the GitHub release, not the container
image. Not because a pinned download is unusual here (the Containerfile downloads every tool
it bakes) but because those two decided the version, the network and the machine SILENTLY,
at test time, on whatever host ran the tests; and each quietly turned "the toolchain has no
promtool" into a green run, which is how the toolchain stayed without one. Missing promtool
is exit 3 (UNWIRED, never green); a PROMTOOL= that does not resolve is exit 2.

ONE WIRING: conformance/tests/l0-static/alert-rules-unit-tested, NOT a gate stage. The
`prom-rules` stage (ci/prom-rules.sh + its Makefile target + ci/gate.sh entry) is deleted:
it is the bespoke-per-check pattern b9f8807 had just removed from ci/l0.sh, and the
declarative replacement gives what a hand-written stage cannot — selection by
`conformance.home.k3s/scope: "whole-repo"` (asserted: the test is selected even under a
requirement filter matching nothing), requirement-attributed JUnit/coverage/ledger evidence,
and run_l1_offline.py's rule that a SKIP of a scope-declaring check is the runner's rc 3.
The scope declaration is load-bearing here: touched-requirements.sh keys apps/* to nothing
and platform/monitoring/* to R-OBS-01/02, never R-OBS-04, so a new untested PrometheusRule
would otherwise be gated by nothing.

The check asserts the pins and their lockstep, that the image bakes and records promtool,
that the promtool IN USE reports exactly the pin (a FAILURE, not a skip: the wrong engine
still prints SUCCESS), that exactly ONE harness exists and none fetches an engine, that
every rule-unit test file passes, and — on every run — that the harness CAN fail, by putting
a synthetic rule through it twice with one expectation mutated.

MISSING TESTS ARE A RATCHET, deliberately, and the reasoning is in the check's header. 51 of
58 alert rules have no unit test. Failing on all of them makes the gate red until ~51 tests
exist, so it gets disabled and protects nothing; merely reporting is exactly how the CNPG
tests came to be enforced by nothing. So the gap is DECLARED in the check as a shrink-only
register, printed with counts every run (13 alert files nothing tests at all; 35 named
alerts inside covered files that nothing asserts on), and it cannot grow: a new
PrometheusRule, or a new alert in an already-covered file, FAILS without a test, and a stale
entry FAILS too. A missing test is never an exit-3 skip — SKIPPED is reserved for the one
genuine environment gap, promtool being absent.

PROVEN, in the rebuilt image (promtool 3.14.0):
  * both suites pass through the single harness: cnpg 6 rules, monitoring 36 rules, SUCCESS.
  * the check passes: 95 assertions, 7/58 alert rules unit-tested, 13 declared gap files.
  * NOT VACUOUS, twice over. Shortening CNPGPrimariesCoLocated's `for: 30m` to 5m turns it
    red (pending expected at 25m/29m, got firing), reverted. Adding an untested
    PrometheusRule (platform/kubevirt/probe-alerts.yaml) turns it red on the ratchet,
    removed. The harness's own mutation self-test runs on every invocation.
  * the scope mechanism selects it: `run.sh --layer l0 --requirements r-nosuchreq-99
    --include-scope whole-repo --print-selection` lists alert-rules-unit-tested.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <[email protected]>
2026-09-13 00:02:27 -05:00
..

conformance/ — the home-k3s conformance harness (WS-TEST)

This subtree is the definition of "done" for the whole platform. Nothing is accepted on a demo, a screenshot, or "it reconciled": every requirement is proven by an automated, reproducible, behavior-based test tagged with the requirement ID(s) it verifies (spec docs/14, ADR-0010, ADR-0011).

Tooling is fixed by ADR-0011: Kyverno for L0 (the CI policy gate + in-cluster admission enforcer — owned by task T-0.5) and Chainsaw for L1 rendering / L2 behavioral / L3 fault-injection (this harness).

The single command

./run.sh                              # full suite (skips L1/L2/L3 if no cluster)
./run.sh --requirements R-NET-01,R-NET-06   # merge-gate subset (tagged)
./run.sh --layer l2                   # one layer: l1 | l2 | l3 | meta | all
./run.sh --coverage-only              # regenerate the coverage report (no cluster)
./run.sh --status                     # derived requirement-STATUS report (no cluster)
./run.sh --lint                       # structural-validate test defs (no cluster)
./run.sh --strict-coverage            # hygiene gate: fail on tag/annotation drift
./run.sh --require-all                # phase-exit gate: every requirement must be covered
./run.sh --record                     # run AND capture the evidence (see "Proof of pass")
./run.sh --layer l0 --include-scope whole-repo   # union: the tagged subset PLUS every test
                                      #   declaring `conformance.home.k3s/scope: whole-repo`
./run.sh --layer l0 --print-selection # print the dirs the selection resolves to; run nothing

Gating is scoped, not "all 51 always" (R-TEST-03). Three distinct checks:

  • --strict-coverage — hygiene (always-on, WS-TEST owns it): fails only on tag/annotation drift or a tag absent from the registry. Uncovered future-phase requirements are visible gaps in the report, not a harness failure.

  • --requirements R-… — merge gate: selects the tagged tests to run and asserts those touched requirements are covered (a listed safety-critical one must have an L3 test).

  • --require-all — phase-exit gate: every registry requirement must be covered.

  • --include-scope whole-repo — the escape hatch scoping needs, because scoping has one blind spot and it is the worst-shaped kind. Some L0 invariants quantify over the WHOLE tracked tree (no plaintext secrets anywhere; no RBAC wildcard anywhere), or over subtrees the coarse path→requirement map keys to nothing (apps/, infra/, most of platform/). For those, the change most likely to break the invariant attributes no requirement at all, so requirement-scoped selection filters the check out of exactly that change. Such a test declares its scope:

    metadata:
      annotations:
        conformance.home.k3s/scope: "whole-repo"
    

    and --include-scope whole-repo unions every declaring test into the selection. The CI stages (ci/l0.sh, ci/l1.sh, ci/conformance.sh) all pass it, so adding the annotation is the only step — there is nothing to remember and nothing to hand-write. Two consequences, both deliberate: a declaring test always runs, and a SKIP of a declaring test is UNWIRED, not green (the runner exits 3, which ci/l0.sh turns into the gate's own rc 3 — never a pass). tests/l0-static/whole-repo-invariants-wired proves the mechanism end-to-end and falsifiably, so it cannot rot silently. This replaced a hand-written "UNCONDITIONAL" stage per check in ci/l0.sh; see lib/common.sh for the full rationale and the incidents behind it.

  • Documented out-of-scope gaps (e.g. R-ENV-02 dev→prod promote and R-GITOPS-01 state-in-git, owned by WS-INFRA/WS-GITOPS and keyed wholesale by the coarse path map) are exempted from the completeness gates via --allow-gap, wired in run.sh as DOCUMENTED_GAPS so the exemption is explicit and reviewable. (R-STATE-02 node-loss used to be here; it now has a real L3 test — tests/l3-fault-injection/node-loss — and is covered, not exempted.)

Coverage vs status — two different questions

coverage.md answers "does a requirement-tagged test EXIST for R-x?" (R-TEST-04). status.md (./run.sh --status, generator lib/status.py) answers the operator's question — "what is the real state of each requirement given what is actually in the repo?" — deriving three orthogonal axes per requirement:

  1. implementation — is there a tracked artifact naming the requirement?
  2. reconciliation — is that artifact reachable by walking resources: from clusters/<env>/kustomization.yaml and expanding every Flux Kustomization's spec.path? This is what separates authored from actually reconciled: a commented-out resources: entry (e.g. platform/image-automation) is correctly reported as in-git-but-not-on-any-cluster.
  3. verification — is the tagged test EXECUTABLE, or a TODO scaffold? Coverage counts both as "covered"; status does not. TODO markers in a body always outrank an executable: "true" annotation, so ambiguity never upgrades a test.

It deliberately refuses to derive proof-of-pass. Nothing tracked in git records a test result — _artifacts/ and results/ are git-ignored and DECISIONS-LOG.md prose is not a signal — so every requirement's proof state is reported as not-derivable rather than defaulting to green. A status report that overstates completion is worse than none (agents/definition-of-done.md). Closing that gap needs a committed, machine-readable run ledger; until then the strongest claim the report makes is wired and testable. --strict-coverage also applies status's hygiene gate (registry↔spec drift, annotation/body conflicts, a safety-critical requirement whose only L3 test is a scaffold). Exit codes follow ci/lib.sh: 0 pass / 1 fail / 3 skipped — a skip is never green.

run.sh is the only entrypoint. Local runs and the in-cluster CI Chainsaw Job call the same script with the same config, so results are identical.

Artifacts (always emitted, under _artifacts/, git-ignored)

Path What Consumer
_artifacts/report.junit.xml JUnit — Chainsaw results, or a skipped-scaffold shim when no cluster CI gate
_artifacts/coverage/coverage.md Human requirement-coverage report PR reviewers / logs
_artifacts/coverage/coverage.json Machine coverage: {requirement: [tests]}, gaps, safety gaps CI gate
_artifacts/status/status.md Human requirement-STATUS report derived from repo state operator / PM
_artifacts/status/status.json Machine status: implementation / reconciliation / verification per requirement tooling

Reproducibility contract (R-TEST-02 — what the harness guarantees)

  • Single command. ./run.sh (or a tagged/layer subset) runs everything and emits the artifacts above — locally and in CI.
  • Hermetic. Each Chainsaw test provisions its own namespace + fixtures/probes and tears them down (config/chainsaw-config.yaml auto-creates/auto-deletes the namespace; tests add finally for anything out-of-namespace). It never relies on pre-existing state.
  • Deterministic. Tool versions pinned in versions.env; eventual consistency handled by bounded polling with explicit timeouts (config), never sleeps or wall-clock/ordering assumptions.
  • Isolated & parallel-safe. Unique generated namespaces + per-requirement labels; tests run concurrently without cross-talk.
  • Machine-readable & requirement-tagged. JUnit + coverage, every result carrying its R-* tags (convention in tests/README.md).
  • Self-cleaning. Fixtures removed on pass or fail; a leaked namespace/fixture is itself a failure (skipDelete: false, enforced delete/cleanup timeouts).
  • Versioned with the code. Tests live next to what they verify and change only when the human-owned spec they encode changes — never weakened to go green (R-TEST-06).

Layout

run.sh                      single-command runner (the entrypoint)
versions.env                pinned toolchain (Chainsaw/kubectl/Kyverno) — determinism
config/chainsaw-config.yaml  shared execution contract (timeouts, ns isolation, JUnit)
requirements/registry.yaml   mirror of EVERY spec R-* ID (coverage enumerates from here)
lib/
  common.sh                  tagging convention + test discovery/selection helpers
  coverage.py                requirement-coverage generator (stdlib only)
  status.py                  requirement-STATUS generator (stdlib only; --selftest)
  record_run.py              run-ledger writer: PROOF-of-pass (stdlib only; --selftest)
  emit_skipped_junit.py      Phase-0 skipped-JUnit shim (no cluster)
runs/
  ledger.jsonl               TRACKED append-only proof-of-pass ledger (one row per
                             testcase per run) — the only source status.py trusts
  <UTC>-<short-sha>/         TRACKED per-run evidence: run.log + report.junit.xml
tests/
  l1-rendering/  l2-behavioral/  l3-fault-injection/  meta/   (see tests/README.md)
incluster/
  chainsaw-job.yaml  rbac.yaml   in-cluster L2/L3 Job + scoped test SA (ADR-0011)

Proof of pass — the run ledger (runs/)

--status used to report PROVEN: 0 for all 51 requirements, and said so honestly: proof-of-pass was not recoverable from repo state. _artifacts/ is gitignored and the root .gitignore kills *.junit.xml globally, so no run result ever reached git; the only record of a green run was DECISIONS-LOG.md prose. runs/ is the fix lib/status.py asked for — a committed, machine-readable run ledger.

./run.sh --record                     # runs normally, and captures the evidence
# -> conformance/runs/<UTC>-<short-sha>/run.log            (tee'd, carries the sentinels)
# -> conformance/runs/<UTC>-<short-sha>/report.junit.xml   (that run's JUnit)
# -> conformance/runs/ledger.jsonl                         (one appended row per testcase)
python3 lib/record_run.py --run-dir runs/<id> [--dry-run]  # or record an existing run dir
python3 lib/record_run.py --selftest                       # deterministic, no cluster

Recording is explicit, never implicit. Plain ./run.sh writes no ledger row: a run that silently records itself is how a bad run becomes a permanent false proof. Commit the run dir and the ledger — an uncommitted ledger proves nothing.

Why a committed JUnit alone would be WORSE than nothing

The L2/L3 tests are runnable and self-skipping: when a precondition is missing (no longhorn StorageClass, no Velero CRDs, fewer than 3 Ready nodes) they echo a skip token and exit 0, and their check: accepts either outcome —

(contains($stdout, 'DR_RESTORED_FROM_OFF_CLUSTER_BACKUP_OK')
 || contains($stdout, 'DR_RESTORE_SKIPPED_OK')): true

So a self-skip exits 0 and Chainsaw records passed exactly as a real run does, and Chainsaw's JUnit carries no stdout — its <testcase> elements hold only <properties>. A committed JUnit on its own would therefore record DR_RESTORE_SKIPPED_OK as proof of R-STATE-03: fake green, and worse than no ledger because it would look authoritative.

The sentinel token in run.log is the only thing that separates proven from skipped. record_run.py derives each test's tokens from its own chainsaw-test.yaml (every contains($stdout, 'TOKEN'); *_SKIP*_OK is a skip token, the last non-skip token is the verdict token), so the table below is never hand-maintained:

Test pass token (proof) skip token (never proof)
l3/node-loss NODE_LOSS_VOLUME_AVAILABLE_OK NODE_LOSS_SKIPPED_OK
l3/dr-restore DR_RESTORED_FROM_OFF_CLUSTER_BACKUP_OK (+ OFF_CLUSTER_TARGET_OK, BACKUPS_ARE_SCHEDULED_OK) DR_RESTORE_SKIPPED_OK, DR_SCHEDULE_SKIPPED_OK
l3/data-survival DATA_SURVIVED_OK DATA_SURVIVAL_SKIPPED_OK
l3/vm-data-survival VM_DATA_SURVIVED_OK VM_DATA_SURVIVAL_SKIPPED_OK
l3/hands-off-update HANDS_OFF_UPDATE_OK HANDS_OFF_UPDATE_SKIPPED_OK
l2/vm-lifecycle VM_LIFECYCLE_OK VM_LIFECYCLE_SKIPPED_OK
l2/vm-default-deny VM_DEFAULT_DENY_OK VM_DEFAULT_DENY_SKIPPED_OK

A row reaches proof: "proven" on one path: JUnit passed, every declared pass token present in that test's log lines, and no skip token anywhere in them. A skip token beats a pass token (worst wins). Anything else is skipped, failed, junit-skipped, unknown-no-sentinel-declared or unknown-sentinel-absent — all non-green. L0/L1 need no sentinel because lib/run_l1_offline.py already renders their skips as JUnit <skipped/>, never as a green pass.

Staleness — a proof is a claim about a tree, not a badge

--status honours a proven row only while the run's git_sha is a descendant of the last commit touching that requirement's implementing manifests or its verifying test. Otherwise the row degrades to stale-proof, which is not green. A run captured from a dirty working tree is recorded as <sha>-dirty, which no ancestry check can satisfy — so it never counts. Re-run with --record to refresh.

A requirement reads proven only when every verifying test does; one skipped, failed or unrecorded test drags the whole requirement down. With an empty ledger --status behaves exactly as before: every requirement not-derivable, headline PROVEN 0.

How CI invokes it

CI (Gitea Actions, wired in T-0.2 / migrated in T-6.1b) calls this same run.sh:

  1. No-cluster stage (every PR, fast): ./run.sh --lint and ./run.sh --coverage-only --strict-coverage --requirements <IDs the change touches>. Validates every test parses
    • is tagged, regenerates coverage, fails the PR on tag/annotation drift (hygiene) and on any touched requirement lacking a test (merge gate). (L0 Kyverno CLI runs alongside — task T-0.5.)
  2. Cluster stage (L2/L3): CI does not hold a kubeconfig. It triggers the in-cluster Chainsaw Job (incluster/), which runs ./run.sh under the scoped conformance-runner ServiceAccount and writes JUnit + coverage to a results volume CI collects.
    • Merge gate: the Job runs --requirements <IDs the change touches>; that subset runs green and those requirements are covered to merge (R-TEST-03).
    • Phase-exit gate: the Job runs --layer all --strict-coverage; add --require-all only at the milestone where the full requirement set is expected covered. The phase suite must be green before the phase's exit criteria are met.

Phase 0 status (no cluster yet)

No cluster exists, so L1/L2/L3 cannot execute. The behavior tests are valid scaffolds (steps + assertions authored, tagged, TODO(T-x.y) where a later phase delivers the fixture). In this phase run.sh:

  • always generates the coverage report (cluster-independent), and
  • emits a skipped JUnit listing every scaffold (so the gate is green and the artifact shape is real), and
  • the meta/harness-selfcheck checks (reproducible output, JUnit+coverage emitted, everything tagged, zero safety-critical gaps) are what run.sh --strict-coverage actually enforces today.

As later phases deliver capabilities, each scaffold's TODOs are filled and the test flips from skipped to executing green — landing coverage without re-architecting the harness.