pytest-dev / pytest-dev/pytest-timeout

Measure CPU time instead of wallclock time

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#157 4 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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Dominant language
Python
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258
Forks
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Description

Currently pytest-timeout uses threading.Timer to measure time. This measures wallclock time, so if the process is paused for 10 minutes and is unpaused later, timeout will immediately expire even if the process did not have a chance to actually do any work. This happens in GitHub Actions CI, which sometimes unschedules processes for a long time as I have observed for Rust testsuite running under nextest: reported time of some tests which normally take less than one second was randomly several minutes. It is ok if CI suspends the workflow, but pytest-timeout should detect this and measure actual time the test was running rather than wallclock time.

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Research direction

Start by tracing pytest-timeout's threading.Timer-based timeout path and identify where elapsed time is measured. Compare the timing behavior during process suspension with the requested CPU or actual-running time, then verify that suspended CI work does not immediately expire while genuine test execution still times out.

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Assessment

Tech stack
python
Domain
testing-qa
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
45/100

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