Prototype fast integration tests using Microfab

[bestbeforetoday]

@SamYuan1990 Let me know what you think about the approach taken in this PR of using Microfab to stand up a Fabric network for integration testing of chaincode lifecycle. Most of the time is taken downloading Docker images and Go dependencies. Standing up the Fabric network looks to take around 3 seconds, and the test (install and query installed chaincode) then takes about 17 seconds. A big difference is that the network deployment has no Go dependencies so it makes it much easier to avoid using core Fabric and fabric-protos-go dependencies and should allow us to migrate all the chaincode lifecycle code to use fabric-protos-go-apiv2.

[SamYuan1990]

@SamYuan1990 Let me know what you think about the approach taken in this PR of using Microfab to stand up a Fabric network for integration testing of chaincode lifecycle. Most of the time is taken downloading Docker images and Go dependencies. Standing up the Fabric network looks to take around 3 seconds, and the test (install and query installed chaincode) then takes about 17 seconds. A big difference is that the network deployment has no Go dependencies so it makes it much easier to avoid using core Fabric and fabric-protos-go dependencies and should allow us to migrate all the chaincode lifecycle code to use fabric-protos-go-apiv2.

In general, I would like to use anything fast and stable as test infrastructure. but does it mean the Microfab just able to test with chaincode lifecycle? how about channel creation and update?

I just wondering if we can use Microfab replace for test network at end to end test case?

[bestbeforetoday]

In general, I would like to use anything fast and stable as test infrastructure. but does it mean the Microfab just able to test with chaincode lifecycle? how about channel creation and update?

I just wondering if we can use Microfab replace for test network at end to end test case?

I haven't tried creating new channels using Microfab, but it's a real Fabric deployment so it seems like it should be possible.

@mbwhite do you know if it's possible to create new channels and join peers to channels after the network is established using Microfab?

[mbwhite]

@bestbeforetoday yes in theory it should be possible; I've not tried it but assuming all the required information is in the correct places I can't see why it shouldn't work.

I'm 'updating' things at the moment to take advantaged of TLS - would be good to try this next.

[stale[bot]]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

[bestbeforetoday]

This prototype is out of step with current code base so closing. We can revisit this as a potential testing approach later.