Having Problems With ses-ava

[anilhelvaci]

Problem Description

I've been trying to write some swingsetTests in my project to upgrade a smart contract as it is in test-coveredCall-service-upgrade.js. But I'm having problems with my dummy test below:

import { test } from '@agoric/swingset-vat/tools/prepare-test-env-ava.js';

test('initial', async t => {
  t.pass('This is a dummy test');
})

Here's the error message I get:

Uncaught exception in test/swingsetTests/test-crabble-upgrade.js

  AssertionError [ERR_ASSERTION] [ERR_ASSERTION]: The expression evaluated to a falsy value:

    assert(refs.runnerChain)

    at async Promise.all (index 0)

SES_UNHANDLED_REJECTION: (AssertionError#1)
  ✘ test/swingsetTests/test-crabble-upgrade.js exited with a non-zero exit code: 1
  ─

  1 uncaught exception

When I copy/paste the contents of prepare-test-env-ava.js to my test file directly like below I get a different error message;

Test File

import '@endo/init/pre-bundle-source.js';

import '@agoric/swingset-vat/tools/prepare-test-env.js';

import '@endo/ses-ava/exported.js';

import { wrapTest } from '@endo/ses-ava';
import rawTest from 'ava';

export const test = wrapTest(rawTest);

export const VatData = globalThis.VatData;
assert(VatData);

test('initial', async t => {
  t.pass('This is a dummy test');
})

Error Message

Uncaught exception in test/swingsetTests/test-crabble-upgrade.js

  TypeError: Cannot redefine property: toString
    at defineProperty (<anonymous>)
    at async Promise.all (index 0)

  › defineProperty (<anonymous>)

  ✘ test/swingsetTests/test-crabble-upgrade.js exited with a non-zero exit code: 1
  ─

  1 uncaught exception

When I comment out the line that imports wrapTest, the test passes;

Test file wrapTest removed

import '@agoric/swingset-vat/tools/prepare-test-env.js';

import '@endo/ses-ava/exported.js';

// import { wrapTest } from '@endo/ses-ava';
import rawTest from 'ava';

export const test = rawTest;

export const VatData = globalThis.VatData;
assert(VatData);

test('initial', async t => {
  t.pass('This is a dummy test');
})

Above test passes.

I'm able to make test-coveredCall-service-upgrade.js work so I'm guessing the issue is related to my project setup. To replicate the zoe setup I copy/pasted all (dev)dependencies from zoe/package.json and results were still negative. I would appreciate any ideas about what might be the cause 🙏 Until this question is resolved I'll keep on my development using the piece of code below as it works:

import '@agoric/swingset-vat/tools/prepare-test-env.js';
import test from 'ava';

cc @dckc

Possibly Related Issues/PRs

#1465 #5774 #1235

[dckc]

Hi @anilhelvaci; thanks for sharing your experience... it's not obvious to me what's going on.

@kriskowal here's hoping for a moment to ask you about this

[kriskowal]

I’m equally perplexed but also not surprised. The Cannot redefine toString suggests that the object in question is frozen, but which object is a mystery. It doesn’t look to me like ses-ava modifies any shared object, and does take care to use defineProperty in case the underlying object is frozen. That suggests that, even if there’s more than one instance of ses-ava in your program (since import "@endo/ses-ava" can resolve to different physical locations depending on the package it’s imported from), there should not be a problem.

I agree your isolation suggests that there is a problem in ses-ava, but the assert(refs.runnerChain) seems unrelated.

Please let me know if you find a useful clue in my wild speculation.

[anilhelvaci]

For those who run into this issue; this turned out to be the cause for me => avajs/ava#2946 (comment)