Signed-off-by: Wenqi Li [email protected]

follow up of #2398,
fixes #2349 (comment)

..this is mainly to modify the unit tests to be independent of the platform runs

Status

Ready

Types of changes

• Non-breaking change (fix or new feature that would not break existing functionality).
• New tests added to cover the changes.
• Quick tests passed locally by running ./runtests.sh --quick --unittests.
• In-line docstrings updated.
• Documentation updated, tested make html command in the docs/ folder.