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[platform-swt-dev] [ANNOUNCE] [SWT automation] Abbot for SWT 0.9.0 
METADATA:

* to all: Apologies if you receive multiple posts of this
  announcement--our project is new, so we're advertising broadly.

* to non-IBMers: Unfortunately the announced release is _currently_
  only available within IBM. However we are pursuing permission to
  contribute back to the OSS Abbot project whose work we extend, so we
  hope you will be interested in its development.

SUMMARY: 

The OSS Abbot project allows JUnit-based test automation for AWT/Swing
UIs. This first release of "Abbot for SWT" provides a demonstration of
the feasibility of extending Abbot to automate SWT UIs. It is
currently available only through the IBM Internal Open Source Bazaar
(IIOSB), but should go OSS in the near future.

DETAILS:

Abbot is an OSS project

http://sourceforge.net/projects/abbot

which builds upon java.awt.Robot to

* automate AWT/Swing UIs

* do test-first development of AWT/Swing UIs

* automate regression testing of AWT/Swing UIs using robust,
  refactorable JUnit testcases and suites

Abbot also provides a record/play capability, enabling more rapid
development of testcases and suites for existing code, as well as
basic blackbox-style testing. For more detail, see this recent JDJ
article:

http://www.sys-con.com/java/articleprint.cfm?id=1940

as well as the documentation available from the Abbot site. 

"Abbot for SWT" (project name=abbotforswt) is an Eclipse plugin which
seeks to extend Abbot ... for SWT (but you guessed :-) It is currently
available only from the IIOSB (a "walled garden" version of
SourceForge inaccessible outside IBM) @

https://w3.opensource.ibm.com/projects/abbotforswt/

(IIOSB residence is intended to be temporary. We are currently in IBM
Open Source Steering Committee pre-review, and therefore hope to
contribute our extensions back to Abbot sometime this millenium :-)
For more detail, including

* how abbotforswt extends j.a.Robot and Abbot

* abbotforswt vs blackbox tools (e.g. RobotJ/XDE Tester)

* related Eclipse 3.0 plan items

see the (currently rather crude) abbotforswt homepage

http://w3.opensource.ibm.com/~abbotforswt/

To demonstrate abbotforswt's feasibility, we have taken scenario 2
from the JDJ article above, recoded its SUT (a dialog) in SWT, and
designed and implemented an API targeting SWT equivalent to Abbot's
existing API targeting AWT/Swing. For more details, see our release
notes @

http://w3.opensource.ibm.com/project/shownotes.php?release_id=597

Sound interesting? Try it out! However, first:

<required type="legalese">

If you are an IBMer and have NOT already completed your "OSPG
training," please read the Open Source Participation Guidelines

http://ltc.linux.ibm.com/open_source/ospg.html

before you check out any code.

</required>

You have 2 installation options. Instructions are for Eclipse/
WebSphere Studio users:

0 Install the release zip. Goto our release page

http://w3.opensource.ibm.com/project/showfiles.php?group_id=1023

  read the "IMPORTANT NOTICE", then follow the instructions in the
  release notes

http://w3.opensource.ibm.com/project/shownotes.php?release_id=597

  Note that you need not register for IIOSB to get the release, but we
  hope you will, because you're a fine human being. (Apologies for
  speciesism to all the fine non-human programmers

http://www.newtechusa.com/PPI/pressroom.asp#higher

  out there :-)

1 Install from CVS. This is a good first step toward becoming an
  abbotforswt contributor!

- Run your development workbench (devbench) with either Target
  Platform pointing to a WSAD build (which is how I tested), or just
  import org.apache.xerces (should work, but not tested).

- Create a new CVS repository location with

  host=cvs.opensource.ibm.com
  repository path=/cvs/abbotforswt
  user=anonymous
  no password
  connection type=pserver

  and check out HEAD/abbotforswt.

- Browse to our release notes

http://w3.opensource.ibm.com/project/shownotes.php?release_id=597 
 
  search or scroll to "run the demo"

- Skip to step 4

The demo can then be run in each of 3 ways, all of which are
documented in the release notes:

* using Test Collector in a launched WebSphere Studio build

* using pde.junit to launch an Eclipse or WS build

* using Eclipse's JUnit to launch just the UI

Obviously this is just the beginning: abbotforswt will need a lot more
work to become the kind of full-featured, coder-friendly tool that
will help you do better FVT (and eventually PVIT and BVT) of your SWT
UIs. But we can get there faster if you help abbotforswt help you:
register to become a project contributor, and help us develop,
document, test, and support. Check the "Project Help Wanted" page

http://w3.opensource.ibm.com/people/

post to the Contribute or Request Feature forum

http://w3.opensource.ibm.com/forum/forum.php?forum_id=999

or just reply to this note. (And feel free to forward this note.)

Note that, to check _in_ to an IIOSB project, you will need to use
ssh2 under the CVS "ext" protocol. You will therefore want to install
ssh-agent: see

http://w3.opensource.ibm.com/~abbotforswt/ssh-agentHowto.txt

for one way (but a known-good way) to do this on windows.

TIA, Tom Roche, IBM WebSphere Studio Model2 Tooling

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