Ducktape: Keeping System Testing Simple in a Distributed World

Writing system tests is hard. Writing good tests for real time distributed systems is even harder. Not only do you need to call the system APIs, but you also need to check various topologies, scale services, and setup/teardown its nodes, requiring your framework to both run tests and manage your system.

Ducktape is exactly that: it is an open-source system testing framework with built in environment management, and a logical separation of a service from its test. Having a service represented in your testing framework allows you to control its lifecycle and test scenarios that are unique for distributed systems. In this talk, we will go over how Ducktape solves the problem of multi-service distributed testing, what type of testing it is designed for, and how it simplifies the testing experience for complex real time systems. Get ready to get your hands dirty and learn how to write a test and a service for Ducktape.