feat(robot): upgrade pabot to 5.2.2 and write outputs directly to robot_results

[oboehmer]

Description

Upgrade robotframework-pabot to version 5.2.2 and eliminate the file-moving workaround by having pabot write output artifacts directly to the robot_results/ subdirectory.

Stack: This PR is stacked on top of #557 (xunit merger), which is stacked on top of #543 (tests for hostname display). the commit to review is 11c3a28

Closes

• Fixes upgrade to pabot 5.2 #559

Related Issue(s)

• feat: merge Robot and PyATS xunit.xml files for CI/CD integration #557 (parent PR - xunit merger)
• test: Add automated tests for hostname display in D2D reporting #543 (grandparent PR - tests for hostname display)

Type of Change

• Bug fix (non-breaking change that fixes an issue)
• New feature (non-breaking change that adds functionality)
• Breaking change (fix or feature that would cause existing functionality to not work as expected)
• Refactoring / Technical debt (internal improvements with no user-facing changes)
• Documentation update
• Chore (build process, CI, tooling, dependencies)
• Other (please describe):

Test Framework Affected

• PyATS
• Robot Framework
• Both
• N/A (not test-framework specific)

Network as Code (NaC) Architecture Affected

• ACI (APIC)
• NDO (Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator)
• NDFC / VXLAN-EVPN (Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller)
• Catalyst SD-WAN (SDWAN Manager / vManage)
• Catalyst Center (DNA Center)
• ISE (Identity Services Engine)
• FMC (Firepower Management Center)
• Meraki (Cloud-managed)
• NX-OS (Nexus Direct-to-Device)
• IOS-XE (Direct-to-Device)
• IOS-XR (Direct-to-Device)
• Hyperfabric
• All architectures
• N/A (architecture-agnostic)

Platform Tested

• macOS (version tested: darwin)
• Linux (distro/version tested: )

Key Changes

• Updated robotframework-pabot dependency from >=4.3.2 to >=5.2.2
• Added --output, --log, --report CLI options to direct artifacts to robot_results/ subdirectory
• Removed _move_robot_results_to_subdirectory() workaround from orchestrator
• Removed shutil import (no longer needed)
• Updated unit tests to reflect new behavior

Testing Done

• Unit tests added/updated
• Integration tests performed
• Manual testing performed:
  • PyATS tests executed successfully
  • Robot Framework tests executed successfully
  • D2D/SSH tests executed successfully (if applicable)
  • HTML reports generated correctly
• All existing tests pass (pytest / pre-commit run -a)

Test Commands Used

uv run pytest tests/unit/ -v  # 282 passed
uv run pytest tests/e2e/ -v   # 277 passed, 90 skipped
pre-commit run -a             # All checks passed

Checklist

• Code follows project style guidelines (pre-commit run -a passes)
• Self-review of code completed
• Code is commented where necessary (especially complex logic)
• Documentation updated (if applicable)
• No new warnings introduced
• Changes work on both macOS and Linux
• CHANGELOG.md updated (if applicable)

Screenshots (if applicable)

N/A

Additional Notes

Pabot 5.2+ supports specifying individual output file paths via --output, --log, --report, --xunit options. This allows us to eliminate the post-execution file moving workaround that was previously needed to place artifacts in the robot_results/ subdirectory.

The --outputdir must remain pointing to the base path where robot test files are located, as pabot uses this for test discovery.

[aitestino]

Hey @oboehmer, clean improvement — replacing the shutil.move workaround with native pabot 5.2 output flags is the right call, and the net code reduction is nice. A few things:

1. Same pattern as the directory names on #557 — the filenames "output.xml", "log.html", "report.html", "xunit.xml" are hardcoded in pabot.py, orchestrator.py, robot_generator.py, xunit_merger.py, and several test files. We already have ROBOT_RESULTS_DIRNAME in constants.py, so it'd be consistent to add filename constants there too (ROBOT_OUTPUT_XML, ROBOT_LOG_HTML, etc.) and reference them everywhere instead of scattering the strings.

2. The phase numbering in orchestrator.py goes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.5 after removing old Phase 4 — looks like Phase 5.5 just needs to become Phase 5.

3. The comment # (pabot 5.2+ writes directly to robot_results/, so no file moving needed) is slightly misleading — pabot doesn't do it automatically, we're telling it to via the explicit --output/--log/--report flags. Something like # (output files written directly to robot_results/ via --output/--log/--report flags) would be more precise.

What do you think?

P.S. — This comment was drafted using voice-to-text via Claude Code. If the tone comes across as overly direct or terse, please know that's just how it tends to phrase things. No offense or criticism is intended — this is purely an objective technical review of the PR. Thanks for understanding! 🙂

[oboehmer]

Thanks for the review! All four points addressed:

1. Filename constants: Added OUTPUT_XML, LOG_HTML, REPORT_HTML to constants.py and replaced all hardcoded strings across production code and tests (1ce1694, 89171fa, b339915).

   I went with the shorter names (e.g., OUTPUT_XML instead of ROBOT_OUTPUT_XML) as their role is apparent to everyone, and XUNIT_XML is a shared name across both Robot and PyATS, so ROBOT_XUNIT_XML would be incorrect/incomplete.

2. Phase numbering: Fixed 5.5 → 5 (89171fa).

3. Comment clarification: Updated to # (output files written directly to robot_results/ via --output/--log/--report flags) (89171fa).

[aitestino]

Thanks! Great job. Upon a 2nd glance spotted these but they are truly nitpicks, opened the issues as to not look the other way...but this is good to merge imo.

• #585 (ValueError test for non-numeric attributes)
• #586 (unexpected root element test)
• #587 (OSError handling test)

P.S. — This comment was drafted using voice-to-text. If the tone comes across as overly direct or terse, please know that's just how it tends to phrase things. No offense or criticism is intended — this is purely an objective technical review of the PR. Thanks for understanding! 🙂