Checkbox job file format and fields

This file contains NO examples, this is on purpose since the jobs directory contains several hundred examples showcasing all the features described here.

File format and location

Jobs are expressed as sections in text files that conform somewhat to the rfc822 specification format. Each section defines a single job. The section is delimited with an empty newline. Within each section, each field starts with the field name, a colon, a space and then the field contents. Multiple-line fields can be input by having a newline right after the colon, and then entering text lines after that, each line should start with at least one space.

Fields that can be used on a job

name:

(mandatory) - A name for the job. Should be unique, an error will be generated if there are duplicates. Should contain characters in [a-z0-9/-].

plugin:

(mandatory) - For historical reasons it’s called “plugin” but it’s better thought of as describing the “type” of job. The allowed types are:

manual:jobs that require the user to perform an action and then decide on the test’s outcome.
shell:jobs that run without user intervention and automatically set the test’s outcome.
user-interact:jobs that require the user to perform an interaction, after which the outcome is automatically set.
user-verify:jobs that automatically perform an action or test and then request the user to decide on the test’s outcome.
user-interact-verify:
 jobs that require the user to perform an interaction, run a command after which the user is asked to decide on the test’s outcome. This is essentially a manual job with a command.
attachment:jobs whose command output will be attached to the test report or submission.
local:a job whose command output needs to be in CheckBox job format. Jobs output by a local job will be added to the set of available jobs to be run.
resource:A job whose command output results in a set of rfc822 records, containing key/value pairs, and that can be used in other jobs’ requires expressions.
requires:

(optional). If specified, the job will only run if the conditions expressed in this field are met.

Conditions are of the form <resource>.<key> <comparison-operator> 'value' (and|or) ... . Comparison operators can be ==, != and in. Values to compare to can be scalars or (in the case of the in operator) arrays or tuples. The not in operator is explicitly unsupported.

Requirements can be logically chained with or and and operators. They can also be placed in multiple lines, respecting the rfc822 multi-line syntax, in which case all requirements must be met for the job to run ( and ed).

The PlainBox resource program evaluator is extensively documented, to see a detailed description including rationale and implementation of CheckBox “legacy” compatibility, see Resources in Plainbox.

depends:

(optional). If specified, the job will only run if all the listed jobs have run and passed. Multiple job names, separated by spaces, can be specified.

command:

(optional). A command can be provided, to be executed under specific circumstances. For manual, user-interact and user-verify jobs, the command will be executed when the user presses a “test” button present in the user interface. For shell jobs, the command will be executed unconditionally as soon as the job is started. In both cases the exit code from the command (0 for success, !0 for failure) will be used to set the test’s outcome. For manual, user-interact and user-verify jobs, the user can override the command’s outcome. The command will be run using the default system shell. If a specific shell is needed it should be instantiated in the command. A multi-line command or shell script can be used with the usual multi-line syntax.

Note that a shell job without a command will do nothing.

description:

(mandatory). Provides a textual description for the job. This is mostly to aid people reading job descriptions in figuring out what a job does.

The description field, however, is used specially in manual, user-interact and user-verify jobs. For these jobs, the description will be shown in the user interface, and in these cases it’s expected to contain instructions for the user to follow, as well as criteria for him to decide whether the job passes or fails. For these types of jobs, the description needs to contain a few sub-fields, in order:

PURPOSE:This indicates the purpose or intent of the test.
STEPS:A numbered list of steps for the user to follow.
INFO:(optional). Additional information about the test. This is commonly used to present command output for the user to validate. For this purpose, the $output substitution variable can be used (actually, it can be used anywhere in the description). If present, it will be replaced by the standard output generated from running the job’s command (commonly when the user presses the “Test” button).
VERIFICATION:A question for the user to answer, deciding whether the test passes or fails. The question should be phrased in such a way that an answer of Yes means the test passed, and an answer of No means it failed.
user:

(optional). If specified, the job will be run as the user specified here. This is most commonly used to run jobs as the superuser (root).

environ:

(optional). If specified, the listed environment variables (separated by spaces) will be taken from the invoking environment (i.e. the one CheckBox is run under) and set to that value on the job execution environment (i.e. the one the job will run under). Note that only the variable names should be listed, not the values, which will be taken from the existing environment. This only makes sense for jobs that also have the user attribute. This key provides a mechanism to account for security policies in sudo and pkexec, which provide a sanitized execution environment, with the downside that useful configuration specified in environment variables may be lost in the process.

estimated_duration:
 

(optional) This field contains metadata about how long the job is expected to run for, as a positive float value indicating the estimated job duration in seconds.

Extension of the job format

The CheckBox job format can be considered “extensible”, in that additional keys can be added to existing jobs to contain additional data that may be needed.

In order for these extra fields to be exposed through the API (i.e. as properties of JobDefinition instances), they need to be declared as properties in (plainbox.impl.job). This is a good place to document, via a docstring, what the field is for and how to interpret it.

Implementation note: if additional fields are added, :term:`CheckBox` needs to be also told about them, the reason is that CheckBox does perform validation of the job descriptions, ensuring they contain only known fields and that fields contain expected data types. The jobs_info plugin contains the job schema declaration and can be consulted to verify the known fields, whether they are optional or mandatory, and the type of data they’re expected to contain.

Also, CheckBox validates that fields contain data of a specific type, so care must be taken not to simply change contents of fields if CheckBox compatibility of jobs is desired.

PlainBox does this validation on a per-accessor basis, so data in each field must make sense as defined by that field’s accessor. There is no need, however, to declare field type beforehand.

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