Volume 6 — Topology, Provisioning, and UI Automation
Modelling the Environment Under Automation
About this volume
Volume 6 is the environment model the rest of the platform operates on. Volumes 1, 2, and 3 referenced "the Landscape" and "the Topology" as inputs the framework had already loaded; Volume 6 walks what's in those inputs. Specifically:
- Landscape: physical inventory + wiring as a configuration category. The framework supplies the loader and the device- control machinery (Coordinators, Agents, ProtocolExtensions); the project supplies the device-specific schemas via subclassing.
- Topology: logical organisation + roles + verification. The
framework supplies the canonical
clustersshape consumed byLandscapeOperationalLayer._create_clusters; the project supplies the rest by subclassingTopology. - Provisioning: the machinery that creates a Landscape and Topology from a Specification. Volume 3 chapter 4 walked the orchestration side; Volume 6 walks the implementation.
- UI automation: the special case where the system under test
is a graphical application. Cross-platform via the
codecraftai-uiapackage; declarative application mappings for known applications; the same coupling / ProtocolExtension model applied to UI elements rather than network protocols.
Who it is for
Test / automation engineers wiring up complex environments. Platform engineers building automation infrastructure. Anyone whose project needs the framework to recognise a new deviceType, a new Feature, a new Topology shape, or a new GUI application.
Source material
codecraftai-landscaping— the environment model itself.codecraftai-provisioning— cloud provisioning backends.codecraftai-uia— cross-platform UI automation.codecraftai-restclient-gitlab— REST integration worked example.codecraftai-webservice-flask— web-service scaffolding (retired; see the note at the top of chapter 14).
Contents
| Part | Chapters | Theme |
|---|---|---|
| I — The Environment Model | 1, 2, 3, 4 | Landscape, device declaration, Coordinator/Agent/ProtocolExtension/Feature, FriendlyIdentifier |
| II — Topology and Customisation | 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 | Canonical clusters shape, verification overload, subclassing, BaseExt, Pod realisation |
| III — Beyond the Environment | 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 | Provisioning scaffolding, UI automation, declarative mappings, GitLab, Flask |
| IV — Worked Example | 15 | 4-OS sysman feature campaign with the full machinery |
- Chapter 1 — Landscape — Physical Inventory and Wiring
- Chapter 2 — Inside a Device Declaration
- Chapter 3 — Coordinators, Agents, ProtocolExtensions, Features
- Chapter 4 — Device Discovery and Friendly Identifiers
- Chapter 5 — Topology — Logical Organisation and Roles, with Verification
- Chapter 6 — Topology as an Executable Assertion
- Chapter 7 — Subclassing
LandscapeandTopology— The Customisation Mechanism - Chapter 8 — Service-Specific Framework Extensions
- Chapter 9 — The Pod Model — Landscape + Topology Realised
- Chapter 10 — Cloud Provisioning Model
- Chapter 11 — Cross-Platform UI Automation
- Chapter 12 — Declarative UI Mappings
- Chapter 13 — GitLab Integration
- Chapter 14 — Web-Service Scaffolding with Flask
- Chapter 15 — Case Study: A Landscape That Drives a Sysman Feature Test Across Four OSes
How it connects to the other volumes
- Volume 0 — foundation tier (configuration loading, error vocabulary, factory model from ch.7).
- Volume 1 — single-host substrate; ch.9's landscape boundary contract.
- Volume 2 — distributed test execution; the three activation layers walked at the contract level. Volume 6 walks them at the schema / implementation level.
- Volume 3 — orchestration; ch.4 (Specifications), ch.5 (Landscape files), ch.6 (Topology files) — Volume 3 walked the orchestration-side; Volume 6 walks the implementation-side.
- Volume 4 — sysman; UI automation in Volume 6 chapter 11 is one substrate for sysman tests; Volume 4 walks the sysman feature contracts.
- Volume 5 — interop and protocols; the wire that ProtocolExtensions wrap. Volume 6 references the wire as given.
Part of The Code Craft AI Books.