Speed-up tests using `pytest-xdist`

Github CI for huggingface_hub is doing a lot of good things but I feel tests speed could be improved to get a shorter feedback loop on PRs. An idea to speed-up the tests without changing anything to the logic is to run them in parallel. This is something that pytest-xdist does quite well (see docs). In short, it spawns workers in separate processes and distribute the tests on them. Since it’s just a pytest plugin to enable, it makes me think it can be a quick win almost without changing any code/workflow. And it is always possible not to use it for local tests if it doesn’t make sense.

Of course, there are a few cons that I see:

1. In theory all tests should be independent from each other but it might not be exactly the case. I am especially thinking about Repository tests that use a local folder. We would need to check this precisely and if necessary make some arrangement in the tmp folder names. Same goes for temporary repo ids.
2. There is a risk that the staging/prod hub receives too much load at the same time. Do you think that could be of a problem ? (ping @julien-c @Pierrci @coyotte508)
3. There is a risk the machine network limits the tests anyway. This is to be tested but in general I’m confident that we can have a speed-up improvement in the CI.

Is this something that have already been discussed before ? What are your first thoughts ? If interested, I can have a deeper look at it.

---

FYI, I already made a quick benchmark locally using 8 processes for the "Python 3.10 (everything else)" workflow. I did not investigate any of failures but test time has been cut by 5 (3 min instead of 15 min).

HUGGINGFACE_CO_STAGING=1 pytest ./tests/ -k 'not RepositoryTest'

====================================================================================== short test summary info ======================================================================================
FAILED tests/test_repository.py::RepositoryOfflineTest::test_correct_helper - AssertionError: Lists differ: ['osxkeychain', 'get', 'store'] != ['get', 'store']
========================================================== 1 failed, 184 passed, 55 skipped, 38 deselected, 1 warning in 896.55s (0:14:56) ==========================================================

HUGGINGFACE_CO_STAGING=1 pytest ./tests/ -k 'not RepositoryTest' -n 8

============================================================================================== short test summary info ===============================================================================================
FAILED tests/test_repository.py::RepositoryOfflineTest::test_auto_track_binary_files - requests.exceptions.HTTPError: Invalid user token. If you didn't pass a user token, make sure you are properly logged in by ...
FAILED tests/test_repository.py::RepositoryOfflineTest::test_auto_track_binary_files_ignored_with_gitignore - requests.exceptions.HTTPError: Invalid user token. If you didn't pass a user token, make sure you are...
FAILED tests/test_repository.py::RepositoryOfflineTest::test_auto_track_large_files_through_git_add - AssertionError: False is not true
FAILED tests/test_repository.py::RepositoryOfflineTest::test_correct_helper - AssertionError: Lists differ: ['osxkeychain', 'get', 'store'] != ['get', 'store']
FAILED tests/test_repository.py::RepositoryOfflineTest::test_repo_init_checkout_revision - OSError: fatal: unable to read tree ab63aa4a39036f4794bd22e594fec967b94b8cca
FAILED tests/test_repository.py::RepositoryOfflineTest::test_is_tracked_with_lfs_with_pattern - FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/Users/lucain/projects/huggingface/huggingface_hub/tests/f...
FAILED tests/test_repository.py::RepositoryOfflineTest::test_repo_user - OSError: Looks like you do not have git installed, please install.
FAILED tests/test_repository.py::RepositoryOfflineTest::test_no_branch_checked_out_raises - ValueError: If not specifying `clone_from`, you need to pass Repository a valid git clone.
ERROR tests/test_repository.py::RepositoryOfflineTest::test_is_tracked_with_lfs_with_pattern - subprocess.CalledProcessError: Command '['git', 'tag', '-l']' returned non-zero exit status 128.
ERROR tests/test_repository.py::RepositoryOfflineTest::test_repo_user - FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/Users/lucain/projects/huggingface/huggingface_hub/tests/fixtures/working_repo_2'
ERROR tests/test_repository.py::RepositoryOfflineTest::test_no_branch_checked_out_raises - subprocess.CalledProcessError: Command '['git', 'tag', '-d', b'v0.0.1\nv0.0.10\nv0.0.11\nv0.0.12\nv0.0.13\nv0.0.14\nv0.0...
==================================================================== 8 failed, 177 passed, 55 skipped, 3 warnings, 3 errors in 170.12s (0:02:50) =====================================================================

[coyotte508]

There is a risk that the staging/prod hub receives too much load at the same time. Do you think that could be of a problem ? (ping @julien-c @Pierrci @coyotte508)

No I don’t think this is a problem, the tests hit staging, and I don’t think it will cause load problems if it’s just 8 parallel tests.

Btw we also added parallel tests on moonlanding (3x), so I don’t think anyone is against the idea (at least from moonlanding)

One possible issue, is if some tests log in / out a user, or create a repo and then expect a certain number of repos, it could mess up w/ parallel tests (logging out a user logs out all sessions of the user). Or if parallel tests use the same repo name.

But given that we probably have tests already running in parallel when multiple CI run at the same time, maybe there’s no problems? Not familiar at all with the hub tests, talking from a “moonlanding” point of view.

[Wauplin]

Great ! Thanks for giving more context. I’ll address it when I have time and make sure to look at the potential issues you mentioned @coyotte508 and @LysandreJik .

@julien-c I keep it in mind for the repository tests but I’ll wait at least until I have worked a bit on the repository module before refactoring its tests 😄