cellxgene/dev_docs/Release_Validation_Recipe.md

Pre-release Validation Plan

This document contains a general purpose test plan for validating cellxgene prior to release.

All steps are expected to pass with no errors or malfunctions. Tester should check:

• CLI for errors (eg, build error, engine error)
• Browser console for errors
• Expected CLI and/or browser UI function

Backend Test

Getting started build & install validation:

Goal: validate build, install and example demo correctness, per Getting Started instructions.

1. Clean clone of the cellxgene repo into a local directory
2. Follow build & install instructions from the Getting Started guide
   • Confirm no build or install errors
   • Confirm cellxgene --help functions correctly
3. Follow the example data set demo startup from Getting Started guide and confirm front-end data loads correctly
4. Confirm all package (and other) version dependencies are correct and match

Tabula Muris

Goal: basic functional validation of b/e functions using Tabula Muris data and the scanpy engine.

1. Precondition: cellxgene built & installed.
2. Load the Tabula Muris data set: cellxgene --title 'T. Muris' scanpy directory-name/
3. Verify all metadata selectors display and have correct type/options:
   • TODO: need list of metadata and their type
   • ...
4. Verify default graph display has expected layout. need screen shot of expected layout
5. Verify selection controls work as expected:
   • continuous metadata field
   • categorical metadata field
   • graph/lasso select
6. Verify color by metadata type
7. Select two cell sets and confirm differential expression compute succeeds
8. Verify expression scatter plot is correct

Front-end Compatibility Test

Goal: verify front-end UI compatibility with a given browser variant/version/platform.

1. Start back-end on PBM3K data set
2. Load UI
3. Verify all major UI modes/functions:
   • Graph display
   • Metadata selector display
   • Title display
   • Selection - single and multiple fields - correctly display in cluster graph
   • Regraph & reset function correctly
   • Differential expression calc & scatter plot display
   • All graphs maintain consistent selection state
   • All selection widgets (eg, continuous metadata selector) maintain correct status (consistent with graph displays)
4. Verify overall performance is reasonable/interactive
5. Verify no errors on CLI or browser console

End-to-end Functional Test

Goal: confirm end-to-end functional behavior is as expected.

ScanPy engine

1. Basic data load and display
   • ...
2. Select & multi-select of metadata and coordinates
   • ...
3. Color by metadata
   • ...
4. Regraph / reset
   • ...
5. Differential expression: scatterplot, top-N genes, etc.
   • ...
6. Color by expression
   • ...
7. Arbitrary gene expression
   • ...