feat(test-specs): Allow automatic transaction gas-limit

[marioevz]

🗒️ Description

Summary

While reviewing #2901 I noticed that the bulk of its test changes were simply bumping the gas_limit of transactions in tests that don't actually care about the exact gas limit — they only care that the transaction executes in full without running out of gas.

This PR makes the transaction gas_limit optional. When a test omits it, the filling/execution tooling calculates it automatically based on fork properties.

Review Plan

Tests

folder	Owner
tests/amsterdam/eip7928_block_level_access_lists	@raxhvl
tests/amsterdam/eip8037_state_creation_gas_cost_increase	@spencer-tb
tests/amsterdam/* (others)	@spencer-tb
tests/berlin	@kclowes
tests/byzantium	''
tests/cancun	''
tests/common	''
tests/constantinople	''
tests/frontier	''
tests/homestead	@felix314159
tests/istanbul	''
tests/osaka	''
tests/paris	''
tests/prague	''
tests/shanghai	@danceratopz
tests/ported_static	@spencer-tb

Testing Framework

folder	Owner
packages/testing/src/execution_testing/cli/pytest_commands/plugins	@leolara
packages/testing/src/execution_testing/execution	@leolara
packages/testing/src/execution_testing/fixtures	@leolara
packages/testing/src/execution_testing/forks	@leolara
packages/testing/src/execution_testing/specs	@leolara
packages/testing/src/execution_testing/test_types	@leolara
packages/testing/src/execution_testing/tools	@leolara

Tooling changes

Transaction.gas_limit now defaults to None instead of HexNumber(21_000).

Transaction.set_gas_limit() resolves an unset limit in place, and signing now raises ValueError("gas_limit must be set to sign a transaction") if the limit is still unset by the time the transaction is signed.

This lead to many typing issues that have now been resolved, but it can be argued that a better choice is to leave HexNumber as the type for Transaction.gas_limit and rely instead on model_fields_set to determine whether the gas limit has been set by the tester.

BlockchainTest and StateTest Fillers

For State tests (StateTest), an unset gas_limit is filled with the fork's transaction_gas_limit_cap(), falling back to the environment gas_limit when there is no cap.

For Blockchain tests (BlockchainTest), the block's remaining gas (env.gas_limit minus the gas already claimed by transactions with explicit limits) is split evenly across the transactions that leave gas_limit unset, clamped to the fork's transaction gas-limit cap. It raises a clear "test correctness" error if no gas remains.

Execute Tests

The same logic is implemented for the execute path (calculate_max_transaction_gas_limit in execution/base.py, applied in transaction_post.py and blob_transaction.py), so implicit gas limits work when running against a live client, not just during filling.

It can be argued that there's a better path to resolve the transaction gas limit in the case of execute, such as:

• Use eth_estimateGas and use the value returned, with the minor caveat that the contracts that the transaction requires have to be already on chain before calling this RPC method.
• Run the T8N tool interface with the transaction to obtain the gas used.

Both methods require more work and could be implemented in a future PR.

State gas reservoir (EIP-8037)

Rather than special-casing EIP-8037 (fork.is_eip_enabled(8037)), this PR introduces a fork-level concept:

• New abstract fork method Fork.state_gas_reservoir_enabled() (alongside the existing transaction_gas_limit_cap()), defaulting to False and turned on by EIP-8037, currently in Amsterdam.
• New Transaction.state_gas_reservoir field. When a fork enables the reservoir, the transaction gas-limit cap is treated as removed and set_gas_limit() accounts for the requested reservoir (transaction_gas_limit_cap + state_gas_reservoir) when sizing the implicit limit.
• EIP-8037 tests were refactored to express their requirement through state_gas_reservoir instead of hand-computing gas limits (tx.state_gas_reservoir = state_gas_reservoir instead of tx.gas_limit = gas_limit_cap + state_gas_reservoir).

Test cleanup

The implicit gas limit was applied across the test suite, removing explicit gas_limit assignments from transactions wherever the precise limit was irrelevant to what the test exercises. This touches ~509 test files (net ~7,200 lines removed) spanning Frontier through Amsterdam and many individual EIPs (1153, 4844, 5656, 6780, 7516, 7708, 7843, 7928, 8024, Blake2, etc.).

Tests that should rely on the implicit gas limit are those that only need the transaction to execute fully without running out of gas. Tests that intentionally probe gas-limit behavior continue to set it explicitly.

Incidental fixes surfaced while porting tests

• pre.fund_eoa default bumped from 10**21 to 10**27 to fix deposit tests that were under-funded.
• EIP-7883 was not being activated in Osaka; this is now fixed.

🔗 Related Issues or PRs

Closes #2248:

• Suggestion: For tests, let the default tx gas limit be the maximum allowed value #2248

✅ Checklist

• All: Ran fast static checks to avoid unnecessary CI fails, see also Code Standards and Enabling Pre-commit Checks:

  just static

• All: PR title adheres to the repo standard - it will be used as the squash commit message and should start type(scope):.
• All: Considered updating the online docs in the ./docs/ directory.
• All: Set appropriate labels for the changes (only maintainers can apply labels).
• Tests: Ran mkdocs serve locally and verified the auto-generated docs for new tests in the Test Case Reference are correctly formatted.
• Tests: For PRs implementing a missed test case, update the post-mortem document to add an entry the list.
• Ported Tests: All converted JSON/YML tests from ethereum/tests or tests/static have been assigned @ported_from marker.

Cute Animal Picture

[felix314159]

i looked at the changes for homestead, istanbul, osaka, paris, prague and shanghai, they are fine.
fill of modified files still works, and almost all tests also passed consume direct against geth. the only failures were 140 failures for tests/paris/eip7610_create_collision but those are expected (i made an issue for this recently). it is a good PR, we should have done this earlier

[danceratopz]

Hey @marioevz, this is a great addition. Here's a review of the framework changes (only covered the testing framework so far; with partial review of tests for context: tests/shanghai/, tests/amsterdam/eip7928_*). Few comments below, each links to a proposed fix; the full set, including a new unit test module for the dynamic gas-limit machinery is in marioevz#6.

[marioevz]

@LouisTsai-Csie could you check if split_transaction from the benchmark tests still work fine?

[marioevz]

@leolara @danceratopz pushed the fixes to all of your comments, thank you for the reviews!

[danceratopz]

@leolara @danceratopz pushed the fixes to all of your comments, thank you for the reviews!

Thanks @marioevz, I think you missed the unit tests added in marioevz@ebbe563

[raxhvl]

Reviewed 7928 and 7708

[kclowes]

Berlin-Frontier look good to me. This is such a nice change!

[leolara]

@marioevz I think there are places where we are setting Transaction(gas_limit=None) but setting it to a variable that can be None.

[leolara]

@marioevz I think there are places where we are setting Transaction(gas_limit=None) but setting it to a variable that can be None.

Like here: https://github.com/marioevz/execution-specs/blob/f82f657ed2ff7f4d0a5ecd39b3aadb4aaae41d16/tests/prague/eip7002_el_triggerable_withdrawals/helpers.py#L117

[leolara]

I think there are no unit tests for with_gas_limit, _calculate_implicit_gas_limit, calculate_max_gas_limit and state_gas_reservoir. Perhaps we don't need it because they are called from other tests.

[marioevz]

@marioevz I think there are places where we are setting Transaction(gas_limit=None) but setting it to a variable that can be None.

Like here: https://github.com/marioevz/execution-specs/blob/f82f657ed2ff7f4d0a5ecd39b3aadb4aaae41d16/tests/prague/eip7002_el_triggerable_withdrawals/helpers.py#L117

Nice catch, uploaded a new commit a2e13fb. Just as a side note, I think this specific tests need an update because they are no longer really accurate (they hard-code assumed gas costs for the system contracts, which no longer hold).

[marioevz]

Once @spencer-tb signs off we can proceed to merge.