Day 3: CI for farmworld, a Python package - a failed attempt

FarmWorld is a reinforcement learning library for agriculture written in Python.

This package had instruction in the README file on how to install and how to release.

It came with a Makefile which is a bit strange as there are python-based tools that could do the same job, but that makefile did not have a "test" target either.

I tried to follow the instruction in the README file.

On Python 3.11 the installation failed with

Unable to find installation candidates for ale-py (0.7.4)

I reported it: Dependencies are missing on python 3.11

On Python 3.10 the installation worked, but the tests failed with

pytest: command not found

Fair enough. There is no pytest installed.

At this point, however, I got a bit fed up and thought I should try it locally in a Docker container:

Trying to run in Docker container

After cloning the repository:

Start the container:

docker run -it -v$(pwd):/opt --workdir /opt --name farm ubuntu:22.04 bash

Install make, python and virtualenv:

apt-get update
apt-get install -y make
apt-get install -y python3
apt-get install -y python3.10-venv

Just to make sure we have a good version of Python I also ran python3 --version and the response was Python 3.10.6.
So it is fine.

I tried to run make venv but that relies on the command python being available. However in Linux the package is called python3. So instead I executed the command manually:

python3 -m venv .venv

I also reported it: python is called python3 on Linux - Makefile assumes python

Then I continued:

make install

Everything installed fine.

Apparently at first looking at the README file I missed the instructions on how to run the tests, but I saw two test scripts in the test/ folder so I installed pytest and then tried to run the tests:

.venv/bin/pip install pytest
PYTHONPATH=. .venv/bin/pytest test/

This gave me an error:

pygame.error: No available video device

At this point I feel I am stuck. I found some instruction on how to add video device to Docker,
but I somehow doubt I'd be able to do this on GitHub Actions.

Including test-running in the Makefile

Although I don't particularly like the use of Makefile here, but if that's what the author prefers then let's go
all the way and add the test running to it as well.

I sent a Pull-request adding tests target to the Makefile.

No available video device

Finally I opened and issue with the pygame.error: No available video device asking if there could be tests that don't require a video device.

GitHub Actions configuration file

It does not work yet (?), but let me share the configuration file I created so far. It might be useful later on.

name: CI

on:
  push:
  pull_request:
  workflow_dispatch:
  #schedule:
  #  - cron: '42 5 * * *'

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    name: Build

    steps:
    - name: Checkout
      uses: actions/checkout@v3

    - name: Set up Python
      uses: actions/setup-python@v4
      with:
        python-version: '3.10'

    - name: Install dependencies
      run: |
        make venv
        make install
        .venv/bin/pip install pytest

    - name: Check Python version
      run: .venv/bin/python -V

    - name: Test with pytest
      env:
        PYTHONPATH: .
      run: .venv/bin/pytest -vs

Conclusion

This time my attempt to add GitHub Actions failed, but I hope I managed to contribute a bit to this project.