[hyades-dev] SWT test automation update

[Thomas L Roche <tlroche@xxxxxxxxxx>]

summary: abbot.swt and costello.swt are OSS plugins developing @

:pserver:anonymous@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:/cvsroot/abbot

and we prepare to start on abbot.hyades (assistance appreciated).

details:

I recently got a ping from a Scapa-ist, which reminded me that it's
been awhile since I touched base with Hyades. So:

* Abbot

http://sourceforge.net/projects/abbot

  has been OSS for > 2 yrs, but its SWT extensions only went OSS in
  late Feb 04. (Abbot the project began by supporting only AWT/Swing:
  that code continues in CVS in module=abbot.) SWT support has been
  released as an {Eclipse plugin, module} to Abbot's CVS, abbot.swt.
  abbot.swt supports "whitebox" testing, e.g. the coder/tester writes
  JUnit testcases exercising their own code. It's not complete yet
  (one notable open problem is

https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=38436

  which makes menu automation unduly difficult, and which we and some
  performance folks intend to try to patch ASAP), but folks in RTP are
  doing real UI testing with it. (Despite abbot.swt's shortage of
  documentation, another shortfall we hope to rectify over the summer.
  Fortunately Abbot itself is fairly well documented.)

* Both abbot and abbot.swt build to binary Eclipse plugins: see

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=50939

  These work, however there are still a few annoyances which I want to
  fix before I formally announce abbot.swt.

* I hope to start work on abbot.hyades soon. My major objectives are
  to make it

· create an Abbot test type usable by Hyades views

· log an Error verdict in case of an Abbot-specific exception

  However I also received a ping about interfacing Costello scripts
  (more below) with the Hyades behavioral model; I'm open to working
  on that as well, preferably with the assistance of others. (The
  abbot.swt effort is currently pursued as a sideline by a group of UI
  coders who need/want the ability to automate their testing from
  JUnit.)

* Abbot also includes a tool called Costello which provides the
  ability to record/play/edit test scripts (which are XML). Costello
  currently only supports AWT/Swing. The SWT group factored out
  Costello-related code into module=costello.swt, but it is

· not complete

· lower on our priority list than completing whitebox support for SWT,
  extending support to GEF and JFace (i.e. providing high-level API so
  that the user does not need to hunt down the underlying SWT
  widgets), and providing a Hyades plugin

* The Apache Maven project has developed an Abbot plugin

http://maven.apache.org/reference/plugins/abbot/

  which they use for testing Java Web Start apps.

I welcome the assistance of anyone who wishes to help Abbot develop;
please post to abbot-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx if interested.

FWIW, Tom Roche, IBM Rational Web Developer Model2 Tooling, abbot admin