Test Suite for Array API Compliance

This is the test suite for array libraries adopting the Python Array API standard.

Keeping full coverage of the spec is an on-going priority as the Array API evolves. Feedback and contributions are welcome!

Quickstart

Setup

Currently we pin the Array API specification repo array-api as a git submodule. This might change in the future to better support vendoring use cases (see #107), but for now be sure submodules are pulled too, e.g.

$ git submodule update --init

To run the tests, install the testing dependencies.

$ pip install -r requirements.txt

Ensure you have the array library that you want to test installed.

Specifying the array module

You need to specify the array library to test. It can be specified via the ARRAY_API_TESTS_MODULE environment variable, e.g.

$ export ARRAY_API_TESTS_MODULE=array_api_strict

Alternately, import/define the xp variable in array_api_tests/__init__.py.

Specifying the API version

You can specify the API version to use when testing via the ARRAY_API_TESTS_VERSION environment variable, e.g.

$ export ARRAY_API_TESTS_VERSION="2023.12"

Currently this defaults to the array module’s __array_api_version__ value, and if that attribute doesn’t exist then we fallback to "2021.12".

Run the suite

Simply run pytest against the array_api_tests/ folder to run the full suite.

$ pytest array_api_tests/

The suite tries to logically organise its tests. pytest allows you to only run a specific test case, which is useful when developing functions.

$ pytest array_api_tests/test_creation_functions.py::test_zeros

What the test suite covers

We are interested in array libraries conforming to the spec. Ideally this means that if a library has fully adopted the Array API, the test suite passes. We take great care to not test things which are out-of-scope, so as to not unexpectedly fail the suite.

Primary tests

Every function—including array object methods—has a respective test method¹. We use Hypothesis to generate a diverse set of valid inputs. This means array inputs will cover different dtypes and shapes, as well as contain interesting elements. These examples generate with interesting arrangements of non-array positional arguments and keyword arguments.

Each test case will cover the following areas if relevant:

Smoking: We pass our generated examples to all functions. As these examples solely consist of valid inputs, we are testing that functions can be called using their documented inputs without raising errors.
Data type: For functions returning/modifying arrays, we assert that output arrays have the correct data types. Most functions type-promote input arrays and some functions have bespoke rules—in both cases we simulate the correct behaviour to find the expected data types.
Shape: For functions returning/modifying arrays, we assert that output arrays have the correct shape. Most functions broadcast input arrays and some functions have bespoke rules—in both cases we simulate the correct behaviour to find the expected shapes.
Values: We assert output values (including the elements of returned/modified arrays) are as expected. Except for manipulation functions or special cases, the spec allows floating-point inputs to have inexact outputs, so with such examples we only assert values are roughly as expected.

Additional tests

In addition to having one test case for each function, we test other properties of the functions and some miscellaneous things.

Special cases: For functions with special case behaviour, we assert that these functions return the correct values.
Signatures: We assert functions have the correct signatures.
Constants: We assert that constants behave expectedly, are roughly the expected value, and that any related functions interact with them correctly.

Be aware that some aspects of the spec are impractical or impossible to actually test, so they are not covered in the suite.

Interpreting errors

First and foremost, note that most tests have to assume that certain aspects of the Array API have been correctly adopted, as fundamental APIs such as array creation and equalities are hard requirements for many assertions. This means a test case for one function might fail because another function has bugs or even no implementation.

This means adopting libraries at first will result in a vast number of errors due to cascading errors. Generally the nature of the spec means many granular details such as type promotion is likely going to also fail nearly-conforming functions.

We hope to improve user experience in regards to “noisy” errors in #51. For now, if an error message involves _UndefinedStub, it means an attribute of the array library (including functions) and it’s objects (e.g. the array) is missing.

The spec is the suite’s source of truth. If the suite appears to assume behaviour different from the spec, or test something that is not documented, this is a bug—please report such issues to us.

Running on CI

See our existing GitHub Actions workflow for array-api-strict for an example of using the test suite on CI. Note array-api-strict is an implementation of the array API that uses NumPy under the hood.

Releases

We recommend pinning against a release tag when running on CI.

We use calender versioning for the releases. You should expect that any version may be “breaking” compared to the previous one, in that new tests (or improvements to existing tests) may cause a previously passing library to fail.

Configuration

Data-dependent shapes

Use the --disable-data-dependent-shapes flag to skip testing functions which have data-dependent shapes.

Extensions

By default, tests for the optional Array API extensions such as linalg will be skipped if not present in the specified array module. You can purposely skip testing extension(s) via the --disable-extension option.

Skip or XFAIL test cases

Test cases you want to skip can be specified in a skips or XFAILS file. The difference between skip and XFAIL is that XFAIL tests are still run and reported as XPASS if they pass.

By default, the skips and xfails files are skips.txt and fails.txt in the root of this repository, but any file can be specified with the --skips-file and --xfails-file command line flags.

The files should list the test ids to be skipped/xfailed. Empty lines and lines starting with # are ignored. The test id can be any substring of the test ids to skip/xfail.

# skips.txt or xfails.txt
# Line comments can be denoted with the hash symbol (#)

# Skip specific test case, e.g. when argsort() does not respect relative order
# https://github.com/numpy/numpy/issues/20778
array_api_tests/test_sorting_functions.py::test_argsort

# Skip specific test case parameter, e.g. you forgot to implement in-place adds
array_api_tests/test_add[__iadd__(x1, x2)]
array_api_tests/test_add[__iadd__(x, s)]

# Skip module, e.g. when your set functions treat NaNs as non-distinct
# https://github.com/numpy/numpy/issues/20326
array_api_tests/test_set_functions.py

Here is an example GitHub Actions workflow file, where the xfails are stored in array-api-tests.xfails.txt in the base of the your-array-library repo.

If you want, you can use -o xfail_strict=True, which causes XPASS tests (XFAIL tests that actually pass) to fail the test suite. However, be aware that XFAILures can be flaky (see below, so this may not be a good idea unless you use some other mitigation of such flakyness).

If you don’t want this behavior, you can remove it, or use --skips-file instead of --xfails-file.

# ./.github/workflows/array_api.yml
jobs:
  tests:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    strategy:
      matrix:
        python-version: ['3.8', '3.9', '3.10', '3.11']

    steps:
    - name: Checkout <your array library>
      uses: actions/checkout@v3
      with:
        path: your-array-library

    - name: Checkout array-api-tests
      uses: actions/checkout@v3
      with:
        repository: data-apis/array-api-tests
        submodules: 'true'
        path: array-api-tests

    - name: Run the array API test suite
      env:
        ARRAY_API_TESTS_MODULE: your.array.api.namespace
      run: |
        export PYTHONPATH="${GITHUB_WORKSPACE}/your-array-library"
        cd ${GITHUB_WORKSPACE}/array-api-tests
        pytest -v -rxXfE --ci --xfails-file ${GITHUB_WORKSPACE}/your-array-library/array-api-tests-xfails.txt array_api_tests/

Warning

XFAIL tests that use Hypothesis (basically every test in the test suite except those in test_has_names.py) can be flaky, due to the fact that Hypothesis might not always run the test with an input that causes the test to fail. There are several ways to avoid this problem:

Increase the maximum number of examples, e.g., by adding --max-examples 200 to the test command (the default is 20, see below). This will make it more likely that the failing case will be found, but it will also make the tests take longer to run.

Don’t use -o xfail_strict=True. This will make it so that if an XFAIL test passes, it will alert you in the test summary but will not cause the test run to register as failed.

Use skips instead of XFAILS. The difference between XFAIL and skip is that a skipped test is never run at all, whereas an XFAIL test is always run but ignored if it fails.

Save the Hypothesis examples database persistently on CI. That way as soon as a run finds one failing example, it will always re-run future runs with that example. But note that the Hypothesis examples database may be cleared when a new version of Hypothesis or the test suite is released.

Max examples

The tests make heavy use Hypothesis. You can configure how many examples are generated using the --max-examples flag, which defaults to 20. Lower values can be useful for quick checks, and larger values should result in more rigorous runs. For example, --max-examples 10_000 may find bugs where default runs don’t but will take much longer to run.

Skipping Dtypes

The test suite will automatically skip testing of inessential dtypes if they are not present on the array module namespace, but dtypes can also be skipped manually by setting the environment variable ARRAY_API_TESTS_SKIP_DTYPES to a comma separated list of dtypes to skip. For example

ARRAY_API_TESTS_SKIP_DTYPES=uint16,uint32,uint64 pytest array_api_tests/

Note that skipping certain essential dtypes such as bool and the default floating-point dtype is not supported.

Contributing

Remain in-scope

It is important that every test only uses APIs that are part of the standard. For instance, when creating input arrays you should only use the array creation functions that are documented in the spec. The same goes for testing arrays—you’ll find many utilities that parralel NumPy’s own test utils in the *_helpers.py files.

Tools

Hypothesis should almost always be used for the primary tests, and can be useful elsewhere. Effort should be made so drawn arguments are labeled with their respective names. For st.data(), draws should be accompanied with the label kwarg i.e. data.draw(<strategy>, label=<label>).

pytest.mark.parametrize should be used to run tests over multiple arguments. Parameterization should be preferred over using Hypothesis when there are a small number of possible inputs, as this allows better failure reporting. Note using both parametrize and Hypothesis for a single test method is possible and can be quite useful.

Error messages

Any assertion should be accompanied with a descriptive error message, including the relevant values. Error messages should be self-explanatory as to why a given test fails, as one should not need prior knowledge of how the test is implemented.

Generated files

Some files in the suite are automatically generated from the spec, and should not be edited directly. To regenerate these files, run the script

./generate_stubs.py path/to/array-api

where path/to/array-api is the path to a local clone of the array-api repo. Edit generate_stubs.py to make changes to the generated files.

Release

To make a release, first make an annotated tag with the version, e.g.:

git tag -a 2022.01.01

Be sure to use the calver version number for the tag name. Don’t worry too much on the tag message, e.g. just write “2022.01.01”.

Versioneer will automatically set the version number of the array_api_tests package based on the git tag. Push the tag to GitHub:

git push --tags upstream 2022.1

Then go to the tags page on GitHub and convert the tag into a release. If you want, you can add release notes, which GitHub can generate for you.

¹The only exceptions to having just one primary test per function are:

asarray(), which is tested by test_asarray_scalars and test_asarray_arrays in test_creation_functions.py. Testing asarray() works with scalars (and nested sequences of scalars) is fundamental to testing that it works with arrays, as said arrays can only be generated by passing scalar sequences to asarray().
Indexing methods (__getitem__() and __setitem__()), which respectively have both a test for non-array indices and a test for boolean array indices. This is because masking is opt-in (and boolean arrays need to be generated by indexing arrays anyway).