InstallShield: How can single custom actions be tested? - installshield

(I'm using InstallShield2012 V.18)
In setup.rul I defined a function per prototype declaration, included the file with the function definition and compiled it successfully (InstallShield compile).
Now I'd like to test this function (only).
I don't want to run the whole installation, not even test (Ctrl-T) because I want to avoid a complete re-build which takes too long time to do it often.
Is there a way to test only the custom function in InstallShield or per command line?

Not really although I can give you some tips.
Create a dummy feature with a release flag of DEVONLY.
Create a dummy component for that feature.
Create a ProductConfiguration that builds a single MSI with no EXE and a release flag of DEVONLY.
Building this production configuration will be very fast. A couple seconds on my laptop with an SSD. You can selectivly include other features through the use of release flags if you need certain components in order to setup the test environment for your CA.
Another strategy is to develop your CA in a test harness project and then transplant the code into your real installer when you know it all works.

Christopher, thanks for this fast reply. I have to put my answer here because commenting was restricted, because too long.
I also thought about using such a workaround but first wanted to avoid it if possible.
But ok, now I tried these steps, 1 and 2 no problem, but 3: InstallShield didn't allow me to configure a Product Configuration without Setup.exe in my .ism file (although we have IS2012 Pro).
Then I tried to do it in a Basic MSI Project (is that what you meant?), which really builds in very short time. And now I can see my scripting during Test Release, yeah :-)
To "transplant" my script now to the main ism I'm missing an export function for .rul files as it exists for custom actions, but there is only a import. So I will have to copy-paste while switching between ism files, but never mind.

Related

Unit Testing File with Space in the Name

I have a Python project where the main file has spaces in the name. I understand that this is not encouraged, but in this case, I think it's necessary. The file is being compiled into a stand alone executable using py2app--which uses the file name for the application name when building the executable (app name, menu references, etc.). This works fine because the base file is not imported anywhere within the project and py2app handles the spaces gracefully. Let's call the file Application Name.py.
In order to run unit tests against Application Name.py, however, I have to eliminate the spaces in order to import the file into unittest. I'm unable to use importlib or __import__ because the file is not constructed as a package, so both approaches fail. My workflow has been to refactor the file name to application_name.py, run the unit tests, and then refactor the name to Application Name.py before compiling it into Application Name.app.
So the options appear to be:
Keep doing what I'm doing (workable, but not ideal),
Create a wrapper called Application Name.py that imports application_name.py where the wrapper doesn't need to be unit tested (seems silly),
Convert Application Name into a package so I can use importlib (seems like overkill), or
Something else entirely.
Is there some way to gracefully handle file names with spaces in unit testing that I'm not seeing or should I just suck it up?
Seems like option 2 probably works best.
Option 1 and 2 are your best bets (yes 3 is a bit overkill), and although 2 seems excessive, it does isolate your python logic from your py2app requirements - now Application Name.py is a "py2app wrapper file", and application_name.py contains your actual logic.
This works better than Option 1 because separation of responsibilities is generally preferred. If you come up with other requirements for your application name, you'd want to have to deal with just the "py2app wrapper file", and not change anything related to actual logic.
Your current workflow works too, but it does mean more manual renaming when you want to run unit tests - what if you want to automate the unit testing process?

How to run one feature file as initialization (i.e. before all other feature files) in cucumber-jvm?

I have a cucumber feature file 'A' that serves as setting up environment (data clean up and initialization). I want to have it executed before all other feature files can run.
It's it kind of like #before hook as in http://zsoltfabok.com/blog/2012/09/cucumber-jvm-hooks/. However, that does not work because my feature files 'A' contains hundreds of cucumber steps and it is not as simple as:
#Before
public void beforeScenario() {
tomcat.start();
tomcat.deploy("munger");
browser = new FirefoxDriver();
}
instead it's better to be able to run 'A' as a feature file as a whole.
I've searched around but did not find a answer. I am so surprised that no one has this type of requirement before.
The closest i found is 'background'. But that means i can have only one huge feature file with the content of 'A' as 'background' at the top, and rest of my test in the same file. I really do not want to do that.
Any suggestions?
By default, Cucumber features are run single thread in order by:
Alphabetically by feature file directory
Alphabetically by feature file name within directory
Scenario execution is then by order within the feature file.
So have your initialization feature in the first directory (alhpabetically) with a file name that sorts first (alphabetically) in that directory.
That being said it is generally a bad practice to require an execution order in your feature files. We run our feature files in parallel so order is meaningless. For Jenkins or TeamCity you could add a build step that executes the one feature file followed by a second build step that executes the rest of your feature files.
I have also a project, where we have a single feature file, that contains a very long scenario called Scenario: Test data with a lot of very long scenarios, like this:
Given the system knows about the following employees
|uuid|user-key|name|nickname|
|1|0101140000|Anna|annie|
... hundreds of lines like this follow ...
We see this long SystemKnows scenarios as quite valuable, so that our testers, Product Owner and developers have a baseline of what data are in the system. Our domain is quite complex, and we need this baseline of reference data for everyone to be able to understand the tests.
(These reference data become almost like well known personas, and are a shared team metaphore)
In the beginning, we were relying on the alphabetic naming convention, to have the AAA.feature to be run first.
Later, we discovered that this setup was brittle, and decided to use the following trick, inspired by the PageObject pattern:
Add a background with the single line Given(~'^I set test data for all feature files$')
In the step definition, have a factory to create the test data, and make sure inside the factore method, that it is only created once, like testFactory.createTestData()
In this way, you have both the convenience of expressing reference setup as a scenario, that enhances team communication, but you also have a stable test setup.
Hope this is helpful!
Agata

Auto-correlation callback function issue - loadrunner

I'm working in new application written in Siebel 8.1, issue appears when I'm trying to replay script and I can't handle that.
Replay Output:
Error -27086: Auto-correlation callback function
"flCorrelationCallbackParseWebPage" failed (rc=1) for parameter
"Siebel_Parse_Web_Page40"
web_reg_save_param("Siebel_Parse_Web_Page40",
"LB/IC=",
"RB/IC=",
"Ord=1",
"Search=Body",
"RelFrameId=1",
"AutoCorrelationFunction=flCorrelationCallbackParseWebPage",
"AutoCorrelationDll=LrwiSiebelCorrelationWrapper",
LAST);
I have done all steps for prepare record options from: http://software-qe.blogspot.se/2008/01/siebel-7x-record-and-replay-for.html
I'm using Loadrunner 11.52 (Siebel Web protocol), IE8.
We've been using the autocorrelation library for quite a few years on my team and we see this a lot. Unfortunately, it's not an easy problem to diagnose.
First I would check your test results and your VUser log to see if something happened before the autocorrelation failed. (Make sure your logging is set to parameter substitution in runtime settings).
Check your parameter files for extra spaces, commas, etc. Sometimes I've seen that error right after it rejects something about your parameter file.
Worst case scenario, your script is corrupted and you'll have to start over. We've gotten in the habit of making frequent backups of our scripts just because of this issue. Usually, we'll be able to start from our backup and continue or create a new script and paste the old code in. Autocorrelation error "magically" goes away with the same code in a new script.
If auto(magical)correlation does not work then use manual correlation.
Record twice with same data: Compare. You will find session, state and time data.
Change the credentials: Re-record. Compare. You will find credential related correlation
Change the business record but keep the same business process. Re-Record. You will find the business related correlation.
Do not expect autocorrelation to provide a magical working script. You have about a 0.0001% chance of that happening without LoadRunner script development intervenetion.

Perl: libapt-pkg-perl AptPkg::Cache->new strange behaviour under precise

I have a very strange problem with the constructor of AptPkg::Cache object in the precise package of libapt-pkg-perl (v. 0.1.25).
The perl script is designed to download a debian package for three different architectures (i386, armel, armhf). For each architecture I do the following:
Configure AptPkg::Config '$_config' with the right parameters and package-lists for the desired architecture.
Create the cache object with AptPkg::Cache->new .
Call the method AptPkg::Cache->policy to create the AptPkg::Policy object.
Call the method AptPkg::Policy->candidate("program-name") .
Download the package for the selected architecture.
This works very well with Ubuntu Lucid, but with Ubuntu Precise I can only download the package for the first architecture defined. For the other two architectures there will be no installation candidate (method AptPkg::Policy->candidate("Package-Name") doesn't return an object).
I tried to build a workaround and I found one solution how the script works for all three architectures, without problems, in precise:
If I create the cache object (with AptPkg::Cache->new) twice in a row it works and the script downloads the debian package for all three architectures:
my $cache = AptPkg::Cache->new;
$cache = AptPkg::Cache->new;
I'm sure that the problem has something to do with the method AptPkg::Cache->new because I checked everything else, what could cause the problem, twice. All config-variables are set correctly and I even get a different Hash for AptPkg::Cache->new for each architecture, but it seems that I am overlooking something important.
I'm not very familiar with perl, so I am asking you guys if someone can explain why the script works with the workaround but not without it. Further it looks quite strange if you have the same line of code twice in your script.
Maybe you hit this bug - https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/libapt-pkg-perl/+bug/994509
There is a script there to test if you're affected. If it's something else consider submitting a bug report.
edit: Just saw this is 11 months old :/

Is there a way to run a single cucumber feature file on autotest?

I'd like to run just a single cucumber feature file on autotest. I'd like the test to be run, report failures, then run again as soon as I save a change to my code base. Anyone know a way to do this?
--Jack
I found a solution myself:
Watchr - https://github.com/mynyml/watchr
It watches whenever you save specified files and runs specified tests at that point. Uses pattern matching.

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