Comments on Tapestry Central: Tests: Auto Launch Application, or Expect Running?

I'd kind of assume (in this scenario) that the...

2012-02-28T08:08:00.777-08:00

I'd kind of assume (in this scenario) that the command-line build would spin up the app as well, but the in-IDE test suite would expect the app to be already running.

If one is using TestNG then it's easy to add m...

2012-02-28T02:22:49.439-08:00

If one is using TestNG then it's easy to add method that checks is application already running and if not then it will start jetty + app.

As for myself: anything that developers wrote has to start application.
Anything that QA writes runs against some instance of application (for most of the time it's nightly

Our test suite is in a separate (Eclipse, Maven) p...

2012-02-25T09:10:08.611-08:00

Our test suite is in a separate (Eclipse, Maven) project and expects the application to run already.

It's easier that way for devs because they can run tests (or part of the tests) to the in-IDE running instance. And it's easier for the QA people because they can run the tests against our QA instance.

Our previous acceptance test used to start the app instance embedded and also use some services directly. We changed that because it grew bigger, was hard to debug and QA could not see what was going on.

Our current test is built with cucumber-jvm and Selenium Web Driver.

A very good source of ideas and best practices for us was Continuous Delivery

Used such pattern on my earlier non-tapestry proje...

2012-02-24T04:58:15.692-08:00

Used such pattern on my earlier non-tapestry projects:
start application->execute selenium tests->stop application
Everything was configured in maven pom. Application was started with jetty plugin. So it makes possible to test the whole web application without need to restart container.

Also there was another pattern on one project:
application build->deploy->tests build->run tests
In this way application and its tests was separated into different projects.

It's less effort to require the application to...

2012-02-23T18:37:41.030-08:00

It's less effort to require the application to be running. It's more dangerous in my opinion. I'm a big fan of a single command from a fresh checkout that works. And works the same for a developer as it does for a CI build.

It takes more effort to have the tests spin up the app. It means that external portions of the app need to be faked out. It means that your app needs to support a light-weight database. It means effort around (re)creating the schema. Etc.

There are lots of benefits though too. Who says the whole app needs to be started? What if some tests are only interested in functional tests against one layer (i.e. the UI)? The layer beneath can be faked out. More effort again, but it ensures a clean separation between UI and the service layer.