IRIS DevTester

Battle-tested InterSystems IRIS infrastructure utilities for Python development

What is This?

IRIS DevTester is a comprehensive Python package that provides automatic, reliable, production-tested infrastructure for InterSystems IRIS development. It handles connectivity, container lifecycles, and test data management, codifying years of experience into a reusable toolkit.

Problems It Solves

Auto-Remediation: Fixes "Password change required" and expired accounts automatically
Port Management: Eliminates conflicts when running tests in parallel
Isolation: Ensures every test gets a clean, isolated database instance
Performance: DBAPI-first connection pooling is 3x faster than traditional JDBC
Data Refresh: High-speed GOF fixture loading (10-100x faster than SQL inserts)

Quick Start

1. Install

pip install iris-devtester[all]

2. SQLite-Level Connectivity (Warm Start)

Use the persistent dev instance for instant connections across projects:

idt dev up

Then in your code:

from iris_devtester.connections import get_connection

# Instant connection to a project-specific namespace
conn = get_connection()

3. Ephemeral Containers (for CI/CD)

For completely isolated test containers:

from iris_devtester.containers import IRISContainer

def test_connection():
    with IRISContainer.community() as iris:
        conn = iris.get_connection()
        cursor = conn.cursor()
        cursor.execute("SELECT 1")
        assert cursor.fetchone()[0] == 1

Container Editions

Three canonical container editions are available:

Edition	Size	Use Case	Image
Community	~972MB	Development, testing	`intersystemsdc/iris-community`
Enterprise	~1GB+	Production testing	`containers.intersystems.com/intersystems/iris`
Light	~580MB	CI/CD pipelines	`caretdev/iris-community-light`

Python API

from iris_devtester.containers import IRISContainer

# Community Edition (auto-detects ARM64 vs x86)
with IRISContainer.community() as iris:
    conn = iris.get_connection()

# Light Edition (85% smaller, for CI/CD)
with IRISContainer.light() as iris:
    conn = iris.get_connection()

# Enterprise Edition (requires license)
with IRISContainer.enterprise(license_key="/path/to/iris.key") as iris:
    conn = iris.get_connection()

# Specify version
with IRISContainer.community(version="2025.1") as iris:
    conn = iris.get_connection()

CLI Usage

# Community (default)
iris-devtester container up

# Light edition for CI/CD
iris-devtester container up --edition light

# Enterprise edition with license
iris-devtester container up --edition enterprise --license /path/to/iris.key

# List running IRIS containers
iris-devtester container list

Light Edition Details

The Light edition removes components unnecessary for SQL-only workloads:

Removed: Interoperability/Ensemble, Management Portal, DeepSee/BI, CSP/REST
Kept: SQL engine, DBAPI, JDBC, ODBC, SQLAlchemy-IRIS support

Perfect for microservices, automated testing, and Python/SQL pipelines.

Builder Methods

# Set a custom container name (for debugging, logs, multiple containers)
iris = IRISContainer.community().with_name("my-test-db")

# Set credentials
iris = IRISContainer.community().with_credentials("_SYSTEM", "MyPassword")

# Pre-configure password (set via IRIS_PASSWORD env var at startup)
iris = IRISContainer.community().with_preconfigured_password("MyPassword")

# Chain multiple options
with IRISContainer.community() \
    .with_name("integration-test-db") \
    .with_credentials("_SYSTEM", "TestPass123") as iris:
    conn = iris.get_connection()

Constructor Parameters

IRISContainer(
    image="intersystemsdc/iris-community:latest",  # Docker image
    username="_SYSTEM",                             # Default username
    password="SYS",                                 # Default password
    namespace="USER",                               # Default namespace
    name="my-container",                            # Container name (alternative to with_name)
)

Key Features

🔐 Automatic Password Management: Remediates security flags using official system APIs.
🐳 Container Lifecycle: CLI and Python API for IRIS container management (up, start, stop).
📦 DAT Fixture Management: Create and load reproducible test fixtures in seconds.
⚡ DBAPI-First Performance: Automatically selects the fastest available driver.
📊 Resource Monitoring: Resource-aware performance tracking.

AI-Assisted Development

This project is optimized for AI coding assistants:

Agent Skills - Hierarchical guidance for Claude, Cursor, and Copilot (iris-devtester, -containers, -connections).
AGENTS.md - Common build and test commands.

Works with iris-agentic-dev

iris-devtester owns the container lifecycle; iris-agentic-dev (iad) owns compiling and executing ObjectScript inside it. They share one authoritative description of a connection so neither side has to reconstruct it — no manual port hunting.

Once a container is up, emit the handoff fragment iad reads from .iris-agentic-dev.toml:

from iris_devtester.containers import IRISContainer

# Attach to a running container (e.g. started by `idt container up`)
container = IRISContainer.attach("opsreview-iris")

# Build the handoff contract (auto-detects a WebGateway sidecar if present)
info = container.connection_info()

# Write the fragment iad hot-reloads
with open(".iris-agentic-dev.toml", "w") as f:
    f.write(info.to_toml_snippet())

For a Docker-only container (no WebGateway), to_toml_snippet() emits:

container = "opsreview-iris"
docker_only = true
namespace = "USER"

When a WebGateway sidecar is detected on the same Docker network, it emits the host-mapped web port instead:

container = "opsreview-iris"
web_port = 52774
docker_only = false
namespace = "USER"

Install the optional integration extra with pip install iris-devtester[iad]. See AGENTS.md → ECOSYSTEM and the iris-devtester-connections skill.

Documentation

License

MIT License - See LICENSE

Metadata

Release files for iris-devtester 1.20.1

For a detailed explanation of source distributions (sdists) and built distributions (wheels), please see the package formats documentation.

Source distribution (sdist)

Source distribution for iris-devtester 1.20.1
File	Size	Uploaded
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Built distribution (wheel)

Table of built distributions (wheels) for iris-devtester 1.20.1
File	Interpreter	ABI	Platform	Reset
iris_devtester-1.20.1-py3-none-any.whl 185.6 kB Sep 29, 2026	Python 3	none	any	Details

Total release size: 814.3 kB

Release files / iris_devtester-1.20.1.tar.gz

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Size	185.6 kB
Tags	Python 3
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