[sdairs]

Part of #1174.

Summary

A warm cargo test -p clickhousectl on the stack top went from 152.8s to about 61–75s. The range is run-to-run noise on a shared machine. Coverage is unchanged; two slow tests were restored in fast form after review.

• Hidden test overrides for production waits. src/timing.rs adds one helper, duration_override(env, default). Each wait keeps its shipped constant as the default; an unset or malformed variable keeps the default. The overrides are documented only in docs/development.md, not in help or the user docs:
  • CHCTL_UDF_LOAD_TIMEOUT_MS
  • CHCTL_TERM_TIMEOUT_MS
  • CHCTL_SERVICE_STOP_POLL_INTERVAL_MS
  • CHCTL_UDF_POLL_INTERVAL_MS
  • CHCTL_QUERY_READINESS_TIMEOUT_MS
  • CHCTL_KEY_PROPAGATION_TIMEOUT_MS
  • CHCTL_UPDATE_CHECK_TIMEOUT_MS
• Subprocess tests no longer hit the release server. Each spawned CLI with a fresh HOME made a real HTTPS update check, and main waits up to 500ms for it. Tests now set CHCTL_UPDATE_CHECK_TIMEOUT_MS=0, which skips only the background check:
  • cli_request_shape_test uses an isolated_env() helper in place of env_clear().
  • The local_* spawn helpers set the variable.
  • This took cli_request_shape_test from 47s to 14s.
• Slow tests made fast:
  • The 30s propagation-window rollback, the forced-delete stop-poll tests and the UDF never-loads tests now use short windows.
  • The two #[ignore] 120s readiness tests now run with a 2s window.
  • The redundant human-mode UDF re-run was dropped; Mapping::parity makes its message the same as the JSON one.
  • The two overlapping Postgres 1s-timeout tests were merged into one.
• Parallelism: local_server_state_machine is now 5 #[test] functions.
• Telemetry: each test waits once for stray events, not once per command. One failed-exec test still checks "exactly one event", the only path where both the exec hook and main's tail run.
• Flaky timing checks removed:
  • The elapsed() < 250ms deadline tests in version_manager run on a paused clock. They were confirmed to fail with the deadline removed.
  • A stale "Waiting for the new API key" absence check now uses KEY_PROPAGATION_NOTICE.
• Classifier: src/timing.rs is classified as an install path, alongside stdout.rs and http.rs.

Binary	Before	After
unit tests	5.3s	4.4s
cli_request_shape_test	47.2s	14.0s
local_udf_reload_test	22.8s	3.7s
local_server_state_machine_test	10.3s	4.0s
local_postgres_readiness_test	7.2s	4.1s
telemetry_test	6.1s	3.3s
local_server_watchdog_pid_test	5.0s	2.5s

Not done here: cargo nextest, and the low-value test cleanup, which follows in this stack (#1175).

Test plan

• cargo fmt --all --check
• Both clippy configurations, and cargo check -p clickhousectl --no-default-features
• cargo test -p clickhousectl, three full runs with no flakes
• python3 -m unittest discover -s scripts/tests -p 'test_*.py'
• An independent verifier broke the exactly-once guard and the deadline code and confirmed the tests fail

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

---

Note

Low Risk
Shipped timeouts unchanged for normal users; overrides are test-only env vars with safe fallbacks to defaults.

Overview
Speeds up the clickhousectl test suite (roughly ~150s → ~65s) without dropping coverage by making subprocess tests avoid real waits and network side effects.

Hidden millisecond overrides live in new timing.rs (duration_override). Production poll/timeout constants stay the defaults unless a CHCTL_*_MS variable is set; invalid values are ignored. Call sites updated include forced service delete stop polling, cloud UDF waits, key propagation and Query API readiness, local SIGTERM grace, UDF reload windows, and the background update check (0 skips the request only for that path).

Test harness changes: spawned CLIs set CHCTL_UPDATE_CHECK_TIMEOUT_MS=0 so tests do not hit the release server; cli_request_shape_test adds isolated_env() for that after env_clear. Previously ignored or multi‑minute tests use short override windows instead of shipping timeouts. local_server_state_machine splits into five parallel #[test] functions; telemetry tests batch “no stray event” waits; version-manager deadline tests use start_paused = true.

Docs/classifier: docs/development.md documents the override table for developers; install-path classification includes timing.rs.

^{Reviewed by Cursor Bugbot for commit caed885. Bugbot is set up for automated code reviews on this repo. Configure here.}