Deep copy checks lazily

And set pipeline timeout to 3s, in order to give better responsiveness with very
large datasets which is now much more important as we moved the check deepcopy
in the test's setup phase.

Author: Vasileios Karakasis

reframe/frontend/executors/__init__.py

@@ -36,11 +36,11 @@ class TestCase:
 
     def __init__(self, check, partition, environ):
         self._check_orig = check
-        self._check = copy.deepcopy(check)
+        self._check = check
         self._partition = partition
         self._environ = environ
-        self._check._case = weakref.ref(self)
         self._deps = []
+        self._is_ready = False
 
         # Incoming dependencies
         self.in_degree = 0
@@ -72,6 +72,15 @@ def __repr__(self):
         e = self.environ.name if self.environ else None
         return f'({c!r}, {p!r}, {e!r})'
 
+    def prepare(self):
+        '''Prepare test case for sending down the test pipeline'''
+        if self._is_ready:
+            return
+
+        self._check = copy.deepcopy(self._check)
+        self._check._case = weakref.ref(self)
+        self._is_ready = True
+
     @property
     def check(self):
         return self._check
@@ -97,8 +106,14 @@ def clone(self):
         return TestCase(self._check_orig, self._partition, self._environ)
 
 
-def generate_testcases(checks):
-    '''Generate concrete test cases from checks.'''
+def generate_testcases(checks, prepare=False):
+    '''Generate concrete test cases from checks.
+
+    If `prepare` is true then each of the cases will also be prepared for
+    being sent to the test pipeline. Note that setting this true may slow down
+    the test case generation.
+
+    '''
 
     rt = runtime.runtime()
     cases = []
@@ -107,7 +122,11 @@ def generate_testcases(checks):
                                                c.valid_prog_environs)
         for part, environs in valid_comb.items():
             for env in environs:
-                cases.append(TestCase(c, part, env))
+                case = TestCase(c, part, env)
+                if prepare:
+                    case.prepare()
+
+                cases.append(case)
 
     return cases
 
@@ -295,6 +314,7 @@ def __exit__(this, exc_type, exc_value, traceback):
             raise TaskExit from e
 
     def setup(self, *args, **kwargs):
+        self.testcase.prepare()
         self._safe_call(self.check.setup, *args, **kwargs)
         self._notify_listeners('on_task_setup')
 

reframe/schemas/config.json

@@ -513,7 +513,7 @@
         "environments/features": [],
         "environments/target_systems": ["*"],
         "general/dump_pipeline_progress": false,
-        "general/pipeline_timeout": null,
+        "general/pipeline_timeout": 3,
         "general/check_search_path": ["${RFM_INSTALL_PREFIX}/checks/"],
         "general/check_search_recursive": false,
         "general/clean_stagedir": true,

unittests/test_dependencies.py

@@ -375,7 +375,11 @@ def assert_deps(self):
 
 def test_build_deps(loader, default_exec_ctx):
     checks = loader.load_all(force=True)
-    cases = executors.generate_testcases(checks)
+
+    # We need to prepare the test cases as if we were about to run them,
+    # because we want to test `getdep()` as well, which normally gets resolved
+    # during the `setup` phase of the pipeline
+    cases = executors.generate_testcases(checks, prepare=True)
 
     # Test calling getdep() before having built the graph
     t = find_check('Test1_fully', checks)

unittests/test_pipeline.py

@@ -1210,7 +1210,7 @@ def sety(self, T0):
         def setz(self, T0):
             self.z = T0().x + 2
 
-    cases = executors.generate_testcases([T0(), T1()])
+    cases = executors.generate_testcases([T0(), T1()], prepare=True)
     deps, _ = dependencies.build_deps(cases)
     for c in dependencies.toposort(deps):
         _run(*c)