[TIP] Fitnesse testing

[David Brochu]

On 3/15/07, Grig Gheorghiu <grig at gheorghiu.net> wrote:
>
> --- David Montgomery <davidlmontgomery at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >
> > Not long ago on this list Grig wrote "glad I managed to convince
> > you of the utility of Fitnesse", and he mentioned that PyFIT/Fitnesse
> > was included in Grig's and Titus' testing tutorial at PyCon.
> >
> > On the other hand, during PyCon I noted that Titus said (during
> > the testing tools panel, I think) that he thought the entire idea
> > behind Fitnesse was misguided or misconceived.  Something like
> > that.
> >
> > So I would be curious to hear them (and others) discuss this
> > further.
> >



I think the quote your talking about Grig making was made in a response to
one of my postings, so I guess I will chime in.

I just recently started playing around with/using FitNesse. Grig does a
great job explaining in his last post the benefits FitNesse provides its
users. There isn't enough that can be said about having a means in which
customers, developers, and QA can communicate and have documentation of
requirements, tests and test results. A wiki is a fairly easy way to get all
three parties involved in the software development cycle and FitNesse seems
to wrap everything up into a nice clean package.

Being that I am fairly new to FitNesse I have found that once the initial
setup and configuration is completed, using FitNesse is fairly easy. Build a
table and connect it to your test, run the test and wait for greens
(hopefully :-) ). Shortly after developing one test you soon have a test
suite which can be run on demand or as code changes are checked in. The
value of FitNesse lies in its ability to keep customers, developers and QA
updated with requirements, build notes, results etc. It is nice to see that
tests run on FitNesse pass and show up in green, but what is even more
important is seeing when, where and why a test failed. This allows for
everyone to see where the project is going smoothly, where some loose ends
need to be tied up, and to gauge overall project completeness.

That being said, FitNesse can be really really really picky when it comes to
configuration. This can present problems (as was shown in my original
posting) which can tie you up for hours trying to solve. Another issue,
which can really slow things down to a halt, is getting everyone to adapt to
using FitNesse. Without full support, it is extremely difficult, if not
impossible to implement FitNesse correctly on projects.

If your looking for a FitNesse success story, take a look at the PyCon site.
There was a lecture on the last day of PyCon (Sunday) called "Test
Automation for a Complex System" where a group spoke about how they
implemented FitNesse to test a web app used by private jet pilots. Slides
from this lecture are posted on the PyCon site. Pretty interesting stuff.
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