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]>
9.1 KiB
ci/ — portable merge gate (runnable today, without Gitea)
Task T-0.2 · R-TEST-02 (reproducible, single-command) · Owner WS-GITOPS (CI).
The same merge gate the Gitea Actions workflow runs
(.gitea/workflows/), as plain scripts + a Makefile so the gates are
runnable now, before any Gitea host or cluster exists. CI and a laptop call the identical
scripts, so make -C ci gate == the CI merge gate.
Quick start
make -C ci gate # the single command: run every stage + the R-TEST-03 decision
make -C ci help # list targets
make -C ci tools # which pinned tools are installed locally
make -C ci touched # print the touched-requirement subset for this branch vs main
Individual stages:
make -C ci lint # yaml/lint (no cluster; live now)
make -C ci l0 # schema + Kyverno + L0 static conformance (no cluster; live now)
make -C ci l1 # L1 rendering checks (no cluster; live now)
make -C ci conformance # L2/L3 in-cluster Chainsaw Job (SKIPS unless CLUSTER_AVAILABLE=true)
make -C ci test # unit tests for these scripts themselves (ci/tests/*.test.sh)
The l0 stage has three sub-stages: ServiceDefinition schema validation, the Kyverno policy gate
(kyverno test), and conformance/run.sh --layer l0 --include-scope whole-repo — the whole-repo
L0 invariants a per-resource policy cannot express (secret hygiene across every tracked file,
least-privilege RBAC, spec-immutability enforcement). See conformance/tests/README.md.
--include-scope whole-repo: why the L0 sub-stage is not purely requirement-scoped
R-TEST-03 runs the conformance subset a change touches. That has one blind spot, and it is the
worst-shaped kind: an invariant that quantifies over the whole tracked tree, or over subtrees the
coarse path→requirement map keys to nothing (apps/, infra/, most of platform/), cannot be
selected by the requirements a change touches — because the change most likely to break it
attributes no requirement at all. Requirement-scoped selection then filters the check out of
exactly that change.
This used to be handled by a hand-written "UNCONDITIONAL" stage per such check (3c subst-safety,
3d keycloak-client-secrets, 3e bulk-tier): three near-identical rationales, three hardcoded
check.sh paths, three copies of the same rc 0/3/* case block — and, worse, a mechanism that
failed silently, because whoever added the next whole-repo invariant had to remember to write
a stage. Those stages are gone. A test now declares conformance.home.k3s/scope: "whole-repo"
and the runner unions every declaring test into the run. Adding the annotation is the only step.
rc 3 is preserved exactly as those stages had it: a SKIP of a scope-declared check means the
tree it audits has vanished, so the runner exits 3, ci/l0.sh sets the gate's own rc=3, and the
gate reports SKIPPED — never a pass. The mechanism is itself proven, end-to-end and falsifiably,
by conformance/tests/l0-static/whole-repo-invariants-wired; conformance/lib/common.sh carries the
full rationale and the incidents behind it.
Exit-code contract
Every stage script uses: 0 = pass · 1 = fail (blocks merge) · 3 = SKIPPED (cluster-gated
with no cluster, or an unwired seam / missing tool). A 3 is never counted as green — that is how
the gate stays honest in Phase 0 (no fake green).
The touched-requirement subset can also be undeterminable (exit 3)
touched-requirements.sh is the input to the R-TEST-03 decision. It resolves a diff base in this
order, verifying each candidate exists before using it:
BASE_REF (explicit) > GITHUB_BASE_REF (Actions PR runs) > origin/main > main
If no candidate resolves, if there is no merge base, if the diff command fails, or if HEAD is not
ahead of the base (you are sitting on main, or the branch is already merged), it prints a loud
banner, writes nothing to stdout, and exits 3 — plus a machine-readable reason code
(on-base / no-base / diff-failed) to $TOUCHED_REASON_FILE when that variable names a path.
Why this is not cosmetic. Every one of those conditions used to degrade silently to an empty
touched set and exit 0. An empty set means conformance/run.sh is invoked with no --requirements,
which means its coverage --require gate never runs — so on 2026-08-31 the local gate printed
MERGE GATE: PASS having checked nothing, while CI (correct base, 17 touched requirements) BLOCKED
on real coverage debt. There is no silent narrowing left: the HEAD~1 last resort and the two-dot
diff fallback are both gone. Locked down by ci/tests/touched-requirements-base.test.sh.
gate.sh turns exit 3 into an UNDECIDED merge decision, never a pass:
| reason | headline | exit |
|---|---|---|
on-base |
MERGE GATE: NOT APPLICABLE — no branch under gate |
0 (a push-to-main CI run legitimately lands here; it just must not read as "my branch is green") |
no-base, diff-failed |
MERGE GATE: BLOCKED |
1 (the environment cannot support a merge decision; refusing to decide must not look like deciding yes) |
A stage that needs the subset (l0.sh, l1.sh) still runs its FULL layer as a superset sanity net
in that case — nothing goes untested — and says plainly that the scoped check did not happen.
Reproducibility (R-TEST-02)
- Version-pinned: all tool versions live in
versions.env— the single source of truth shared by the local scripts and the CI installer. Bumping a version is a normal feature-branch → main change. - Single command, environment-agnostic:
make -C ci gateon any machine with the pinned tools. - Deterministic: no cluster state is assumed; L2/L3 SKIP unless a cluster is explicitly declared.
Files
ci/
Makefile targets: lint · l0 · l1 · conformance · gate · touched · test · tools · versions
versions.env PINNED tool versions (R-TEST-02) — single source of truth
lib.sh shared helpers: logging, tool checks, cluster detection, artifact paths
yamllint.yaml lint config for the yaml/lint stage
lint.sh Stage: yaml/lint
l0.sh Stage: schema validation + Kyverno L0 gate + L0 static conformance
l1.sh Stage: L1 rendering checks (Chainsaw L1 via the conformance runner)
(harness: platform/monitoring/tests/). Catches the two alerting bugs no
other stage can see — permanently-firing and structurally INERT rules.
conformance.sh Stage: L2/L3 in-cluster Chainsaw Job (trigger + collect)
touched-requirements.sh compute the R-* subset a change touches (drives the R-TEST-03 filter);
exits 3 LOUDLY rather than guessing when the diff base is unreliable
gate.sh run all stages + the merge decision (the single command)
tests/*.test.sh unit tests for these scripts (`make -C ci test`), run against
throwaway git repos via the REPO_ROOT override — no network, no cluster
README.md this file
Integration seams — entrypoints owned by OTHER agents
This gate is an orchestrator. It does not implement schema validation, Kyverno policies, or the conformance runner — those are other workstreams' deliverables. Each seam is env-overridable so the owning agent / PM can reconcile the real entrypoint without editing these scripts. Defaults below are this workstream's assumptions — flagged for the PM to verify at integration.
| Seam | Owner / task | Env override | Assumed default | Assumed interface |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ServiceDefinition schema validator | WS-GITOPS · T-0.3 (schemas/) |
SCHEMA_VALIDATE_CMD |
schemas/validate.sh |
validate.sh catalog/*.yaml → exit 0/1; --version supported |
| Kyverno L0 policies + tests | WS-TEST · T-0.5 (platform/kyverno/) |
KYVERNO_POLICY_DIR |
platform/kyverno |
contains kyverno-test.yaml files discoverable by kyverno test <dir> |
| Conformance runner (Chainsaw) | WS-TEST · T-0.4 (conformance/) |
CONFORMANCE_CMD |
conformance/run.sh |
run.sh --layer <l0|l1|l2,l3> [--requirements R-A,R-B]; artifacts land in conformance/_artifacts/ |
| Catalog (ServiceDefinitions) | WS-APPS | CATALOG_DIR |
catalog |
*.yaml ServiceDefinition files |
Artifact locations (git-ignored): JUnit → results/junit/*.xml; coverage → reports/coverage/**.
Override with JUNIT_DIR / COVERAGE_DIR if the runner writes elsewhere.
A seam that is missing or not executable reports SKIPPED (exit 3), not a false pass — so during parallel Phase 0 development the gate is green-honest, and each seam goes live automatically the moment its owner delivers a runnable entrypoint.
Cluster gating
CLUSTER_AVAILABLE=true (env locally, vars.CLUSTER_AVAILABLE in Gitea) makes the L2/L3 stage run and
be required; anything else makes it SKIP (Phase 0). REQUIRE_CLUSTER_TESTS=true (Phase 1+)
turns any unverified cluster-needing touched requirement into a hard block.