[TIP] Python GUI testing

[Geoff Bache]

Hi all,

Thanks for the responses. Some thoughts:

Gary - just a quibble, but I'd say appscript counts as a specialised
GUI testing tool...

Paul - yes, open source tools for PyQT seem pretty non-existent
unfortunately. Afraid I can't help there either (yet) as PyUseCase
currently supports PyGTK, Tkinter and wxPython in the Python world. I
found Squish very verbose and low-level when we last tested it (18
months ago) but apparently it's improved since then. Although I must
admit an example from those experiments regularly appears on my slides
as an example of what's wrong with existing GUI testing techniques :)

Nagappan - I've always been a bit uncertain how LDTP actually sees
itself. The headline says that it's all about testing the GNU/Linux
and Solaris desktops, which makes it sound rather specific (as does
the name), but a couple of paragraphs later it then says it supports
all sorts of other things.

Also, I thought I'd watch a demo but all the links on
http://ldtp.freedesktop.org/wiki/LDTP_Demo
appear to be broken.
....
Gary and Nagappan - interesting that you're reaching for
platform-level tools (Linux/Mac) rather than toolkit-level tools (GTK,
QT etc). One thing I wondered about these kind of tools is whether you
can refer to "widget names" at all (most toolkits have a "setName"
method) in the tests. I guess those might not be accessible from
outside the application? Also, don't you end up with many more
synchronisation issues, because a tool running outside the process
can't tell when the GUI thread is idle and ready for action again?

Regards,
Geoff

On Sat, Apr 2, 2011 at 12:09 AM, Nagappan Alagappan <nagappan at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello Geoff,
> We @VMware use LDTP [1] for GUI automation in Linux, Solaris. Here is a
> catch though ! the app should run in GNOME environment (GTK / Java Swing /
> OpenOffice / XUL) with accessibility in place.
> As Paul mentioned it doesn't work on QT environment, but there is some work
> in progress [2].
> Thanks
> Nagappan
> [1] - http://ldtp.freedesktop.org
> [2] - http://techbase.kde.org/Development/Tutorials/Accessibility#Qt_AT-SPI
>
> On Fri, Apr 1, 2011 at 2:54 PM, Paul Hildebrandt
> <Paul.Hildebrandt at disneyanimation.com> wrote:
>>
>> We use GUI testing for our internal applications.  We adhere to the
>> testing pyramid and only using it sparingly but it's handy.  The only thing
>> I could find that would handle PyQT is Squish so that is what we use.   I
>> wanted to use LDTP but they don't support PyQT right now.
>>
>>
>> On 04/01/2011 01:35 PM, Geoff Bache wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> I was about to post an announcement about a new release of my Python
>>> GUI test tool PyUseCase but then thought that previous ones haven't
>>> generated any response so I would ask a question instead. You can
>>> always read the announcement on python-announce...
>>>
>>> Does anyone here write GUIs (rich clients) in Python at all? More to
>>> the point, does anyone attempt to do any testing through the GUI or
>>> are you happy just testing the underlying layers?
>>>
>>> There don't seem to be too many Python GUI test tools around. I wonder
>>> why this is?
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>> Geoff
>>>
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>
> --
> Linux Desktop (GUI Application) Testing Project -
> http://ldtp.freedesktop.org
> http://nagappanal.blogspot.com
>