Smoke test
A brief, shallow test that checks whether a system’s essential functions work sufficiently for further testing or use.
Effective Platform Engineering
A smoke test is a shallow test that checks whether a system or service is broadly operational before deeper testing.
- How it is used
- Uses shallow pipeline checks to establish that deployed services are operational before deeper verification.
- How deep it goes
- Checks container status and startup evidence, then stops short of verifying operating results covered by functional tests.
- Examples
- Demonstrates Running pods, successful startup logs, metrics endpoints, and event-exporter output from Kubernetes services.
- What you can do after
- Diagnose deployment failures early by checking whether containers run and services report successful startup.
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Machine Learning System Design
A preliminary test that checks whether a system or component operates sufficiently to warrant further testing.
- How it is used
- Checks ML training pipelines after changes before engineers spend time on deeper testing or experimentation.
- How deep it goes
- Defines a fast, reduced-scale pipeline check and its maintenance tradeoff, while deferring detailed component coverage to unit tests.
- Examples
- Uses a fixture dataset, one epoch, a dummy ResNet, mocked construction, and training and validation loss assertions.
- What you can do after
- Diagnose/debug pipeline regressions quickly and decide whether deeper testing or experimentation is worthwhile.
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Learn Docker in a Month of Lunches, Second Edition
A smoke test is a short, focused test that checks whether a software build or deployment performs its essential functions.
- How it is used
- Uses minimal end-to-end checks to verify application builds within a CI/CD pipeline.
- How deep it goes
- Explains the Docker Compose workflow and image choices, but stops short of detailed test design or browser automation.
- Examples
- Demonstrates a PowerShell script, local-image execution, staging-image execution, web requests, and container shutdown.
- What you can do after
- Apply it via Docker Compose and PowerShell to check whether an application starts and responds during a build.
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Infrastructure as Code, Patterns and Practices: With examples in Python and Terraform
A small, rapid set of tests that checks whether critical functionality remains operational after a change.
- How it is used
- Provides rapid feedback after changes before teams invest time in the full end-to-end test suite.
- How deep it goes
- Defines the test and gives infrastructure scenarios, but stops short of detailing a complete smoke-test suite.
- Examples
- Uses Cloud Run URL checks, network connectivity, workload completion, and HTTP requests with varying payloads.
- What you can do after
- Apply it via pytest and infrastructure workflows to detect catastrophic change failures before further testing.
Related concepts
- end-to-end testingkind of · End-to-end testing evaluates a complete system workflow across integrated components, from an external or user-relevant input to an observable outcome.
- CPUuses · A central processing unit (CPU) is a general-purpose processor that executes computer instructions and performs computational operations.
- Docker Composeuses · Docker Compose is a tool for defining and running applications composed of multiple containers through declarative configuration.
- misconfigurationaddresses · A misconfiguration is an incorrect, unsuitable, or insufficiently restrictive system or application setting that causes unintended behavior, operational problems, or security exposure.
- pipelineuses · A pipeline is an ordered or coordinated sequence of connected processing stages or tasks that passes data, work, or results toward an outcome.
- baselineequivalent to · A baseline is a reference value, model, condition, or performance level used to evaluate or compare measurements, outcomes, or methods.
These guides are generated from the text of Manning books by Manning's knowledge graph and link to the sections they draw on. The full books are available on liveBook and at manning.com.