UPDATE
TL;DR: As part of Quality Assurance initiatives designed to support parachain operations for the long haul, the Polkadot Technical Fellowship has funded the delivery of the ETE v1 and is now calling for contributions from parachain teams.
The Ecosystem Test Environment (ETE) is a dedicated repo where changes in cross-chain messaging (XCM) can be tested automatically, minimizing the risk of disruptions before they reach the production system. The main goal of the ETE is to ensure seamless relay chain upgrades through the development of an automated testing environment with a focus on Chopsticks integration.
The initial version comes with the following features:
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A framework for writing testing scenarios that uses Chopsticks internally to fork off from the live state
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A basic set of testing scenarios that include different parachains
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Nightly runs for testing scenarios against changing states
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A notification system for prompt communication of test case failures
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Documentation for adding new test cases/chains
While most of the system chains are covered in the existing set of tests for Polkadot and Kusama, the Fellowship needs custom tests from parachain teams to make this ETE more effective for runtime developers in the short term and more meaningful to ecosystem builders in the long run.
Testing scenarios are already available from Acala, Astar, Hydration, and IntegriTEE. The following parachain teams are currently preparing their own sets of tests: Frequency, Polimec, XCavate, and Kreivo.
The Polkadot Technical Fellowship would like to invite other parachain teams to contribute to this ecosystem-wide effort by providing testing scenarios for their parachains that are focused on XCM transfers between chains. Other types of tests are welcome as a follow-up. The process for adding new chains and test cases can be found in the For Test Writers section of the docs.
For technical questions, feedback, or recommendations about the ETE, please open an issue in the repo. Alternatively, teams can get in touch with Fellows directly in the Polkadot Technical Fellowship Open Channel (Matrix) to start a discussion.