Enhance testing framework to use gNMIc for testing

[ronan-nexthop]

Currently we use gnxi gnmi_cli. This has a couple of issue imo

• We have multiple patches extending support for this tool, attempts to upgrade the gnxi hash we pull this tool from will fail has patch 5 hits a conflict and will need to be resolved
• We use older protos in this tool. We take our protos from gnxi which was built against proto v3. To keep this working we need special checks in the docker-ptf container to downgrade protobuf for any environments that use protov4. If we wish to use protov4 we will have to recompile the protos for every build
• Adding additional support to this tool requires adding additional patches and testing which is a disincentive to do so itself
• Test out parsing is by parsing output lines of stdout, which typically results in if "foo" in std_out

I would like to propose we move away from gnmi_cli, and all the problem it has, to gnoic. This tool is

• already backed by the OpenConfig community
• has active development so we can be confident it has the newest features and is properly tested
• statically compiled go binary with none of the protobuf issues
• OS agnostic, we don't need to selectively downgrade protobuf library depending on the versions
• Can output as JSON which can result in nicer python test parsing.

I'm happy to implement the changes to sonic-buildimage and sonic-mgmt, but would like to get some buy in from reviewers that a change like this would be accepted. While we are keen to use it internally i'd like to try to not drift from community too much, and instead contirbute where I can.

[ronan-nexthop]

This topic was discussed in the UMF meeting in the week starting 26/1/2026.

We think it would be a good idea to trial this out by adding gNMIc to the docker-ptf container and converting a test to use it. If we are happy with how it looks we can enforce future tests are added using gNMIc and convert the other tests to use it also. As a cleanup the gNXI py gnmi client as well as the patches/protos it uses will be ripped out.

[ronan-nexthop]

sonic-net/sonic-buildimage#25537

Started the process

[ronan-nexthop]

@sneelam20 to take a look at the above PR to sonic-buildimage. Once this has merge we can begin piecemeal converting tests to use gNMIc and new tests can also use it.

[hdwhdw]

@ronan-nexthop Thanks so much for doing this. There is already an effort to move testing from gnmi_cli or gnoi_client which has poor ABI support and mostly designed for human to some tools with better support. Currently we use grpcurl https://github.com/sonic-net/sonic-mgmt/blob/236337b2c9da8876de6c5380e308c8a637cacdda/tests/common/ptf_grpc.py but I think gnoic might be more convenient since it doesn't require creating request manually. Would gladly work with you in providing support to include this into gnmi test fixtures.

[ronan-nexthop]

@ronan-nexthop Thanks so much for doing this. There is already an effort to move testing from gnmi_cli or gnoi_client which has poor ABI support and mostly designed for human to some tools with better support. Currently we use grpcurl https://github.com/sonic-net/sonic-mgmt/blob/236337b2c9da8876de6c5380e308c8a637cacdda/tests/common/ptf_grpc.py but I think gnoic might be more convenient since it doesn't require creating request manually. Would gladly work with you in providing support to include this into gnmi test fixtures.

I have used gNOIc before and it is also very good for covering the main gNOI RPC's. This is currently already in the docker-ptf image so can be used already, we have it at commit 907284b

[hdwhdw]

@ryanzhu706 @v-cshekar FYI

[hdwhdw]

Also @zbud-msft