## Summary
- Expand Python MilvusClient external_table E2E coverage for schema
validation, lifecycle, DQL, refresh, indexing, read-only/write-blocked
behavior, and multi-format datasets.
- Cover parquet, lance-table, iceberg-table, and vortex basic format
flows with shared data builders and stricter assertions.
- Add REST v2 external collection coverage for external job APIs,
nullable vectors, custom database flow, and format matrix behavior.
- Move Vortex data generation to the Python 3.12 test environment and
remove the old sidecar helper scripts.
- Add Python 3.12 environment setup in `tests/scripts` so E2E scripts
create and activate the expected test runtime.
## Notes
- Vortex full-matrix coverage excludes fields that the current
`vortex-data==0.56.0` writer or Milvus refresh path cannot represent
consistently (`FixedSizeBinary`-backed vector fields and known
string/JSON fields).
- Chaos fault-injection coverage is included in the PR but was not run
against the shared validation instance because it mutates the
deployment.
## Validation
- `uv venv -p 3.12 .venv`
- `uv pip install --python .venv/bin/python -r requirements.txt`
- `pytest -q -x -n 6 milvus_client/test_milvus_client_external_table.py
--host 10.100.36.207 --port 19530 --minio_host 10.100.36.172
--minio_bucket external-table-pr49378-master`
- `162 passed, 2 skipped in 176.78s`
- `pytest -q -x -n 6 testcases/test_external_collection_operations.py
--endpoint http://10.100.36.207:19530 --token root:Milvus --minio_host
10.100.36.172 --bucket_name external-table-pr49378-master`
- `22 passed, 4 xfailed in 66.04s`
- `git diff --check`
---------
Signed-off-by: zhuwenxing <wenxing.zhu@zilliz.com>
Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
