adr02

doc/src/adr01-trace-executor.md

@@ -0,0 +1,73 @@
+# ADR-02: Atomkraft trace executor
+
+| authors         | revision | revision date |
+| --------------- | -------: | ------------: |
+| Ranadeep Biswas |        1 | July 11, 2022 |
+
+## Status
+
+Proposed
+
+## Context
+
+Atomkraft is a Cosmos-SDK E2E testing toolkit with batteries included.
+
+1. A testing framework to write/create model-based tests effortlessly.
+2. Communicate with model-checkers to send model specifications and receive generated traces.
+3. Setting up a blockchain.
+4. Executing/driving a test on the blockchain following the received traces.
+5. Generate a report of successful/failed tests.
+
+Trace executor is one of the top-level components of Atomkraft.
+Given model specifications of Cosmos-SDK modules and _abstract_ test scenarios,
+the _trace executor_ will be responsible for generating and executing multiple _interesting_ traces of the _abstract_ test scenarios as end-to-end tests.
+
+When an E2E test succeeds, it should print a _report_ as output. When it fails, it should save the failed trace or generate a concrete test as a regression test.
+
+_Trace executor_ should also be able to execute a test given a single pre-generated or failed trace.
+
+As an architecture, I propose decomposing trace executor into a few sub-components.
+
+- Testing framework: to write the test, test drivers, and pass appropriate parameters.
+- Model executor: to communicate with model checkers and generate traces.
+- Cosmos-SDK blockchain client: to communicate with blockchain to perform transactions and query to drive the tests.
+- Cosmos-SDK blockchain testnet spinner: to set up blockchain(s) to perform the tests on them.
+
+We choose Python as our implementation language for ease of prototyping and scriptability.
+
+### Testing framework
+
+[Pytest](https://docs.pytest.org) is one of the main testing frameworks for Python.
+Since we are using Python, it only makes sense to adapt pytest as our base framework.
+So we provide a [pytest plugin](https://github.com/informalsystems/modelator) which includes `@mbt`, `@itf`, `@step` decorators for easy test creation.
+
+### Model executor
+
+We choose in-house [Modelator](https://github.com/informalsystems/modelator) to do this task. It is already available as a Python library.
+Therefore, we can directly import and use it where it is needed.
+
+### Cosmos-SDK testnet
+
+Frankly, there are many other solutions to spin a Cosmos-SDK testnet.
+But we are not aware of any Python based library. We already have a prototype at cosmos.net repository.
+Since the codebase remained small and reasonably simple, we decided to maintain it and make it a standard in the future.
+
+### Cosmos-SDK client
+
+We found Terra-Money has a [python Terra-SDK client](https://github.com/terra-money/terra.py).
+But it only works with terra chains because of some hardcoded constants and checks.
+However, we made it work with any Cosmos-SDK chain by 15 lines of modification.
+
+## Decision
+
+- Python as the implementation language
+- Adapt pytest as testing framework
+- Convenient `@mbt`, `@itf`, `@step` decorators
+- Continue with cosmos.net as testnet spinner
+- Continue with terra-SDK fork
+  - Or, submit a PR to terra-SDK
+
+## Consequences
+
+- There may be some overhead when we add support for Go or Rust in the future.
+- We need to maintain Cosmos.net and Cosmos.py.