What is the main purpose of continuous testing? How to integrate continous testing tools with ci/cd tools? You should write your qa testing codes(ex. java code with selenium) and integrate it with ci/cd tools(for ex. jenkins) or there is something another?
Continuous Testing is the process of executing the automated tests as part of the software delivery pipeline in order to obtain a feedback at the early as possible about the business risks associated with a software release candidate. It evolves and extends test automation to address the increased complexity and pace of modern application development and delivery.
There are quite a few CI/CD tools available to choose from and some of them are:
Jenkins
CircleCI
TeamCity
Bamboo
GitLab
Buddy
Travis CI
Codeship
Related
We are currently doing traditional waterfall model where we have manual and automation tests in SIT and UAT environments. We are moving to Agile/Devops and I am working on POC on Devops. Based on my research, Devops is suited for CI and CD meaning the testing is automated and pipeline is automated from Dev to Production. However when we implement, we want to do automatic code deployments in different environments but stop the pipeline to conduct manual QA testing and Manual UAT before the code is signed off for PROD deployment. If I use Jenkins for Devops, is it recommended to stop the pipeline for few days until manual QA is completed and manual approval is done? How is manual testing accounted in Devops implementations? Any insights would be helpful.
CI and CD are engineering practices that enable teams to improve productivity.
And these should be implemented step by step - first implement CI and then CD. So, build pipelines as you mature in the DevOps processes.
For example, leverage Jenkins pipeline to first orchestrate CI pipeline wherein the following is automated-
application build,
unit testing,
code coverage,
The output of this stage are binaries that are deployed in a binary repository like Nexus.
The next step after successful implementation of CI, is CD - the process to auto-deploy artifacts from one environment to another. Consider we need to deploy artifacts (binaries) in QA for testing. You can extend your CI pipeline to perform CD by moving artifacts from DEV to QA systems. And then stop here, since movement to next environment will be done only when manual testing records are approved. This means progressing to next environment will be manually triggered. Hence, while planning to build a CD pipeline, chalk out the essential steps that should be automated and then progress step by step.
Once you are ready with automated tests and tools, you then complete your CD pipeline and automated the movement to artifacts from DEV-QA-NONPROD, etc.
Having a pipeline blocked for days is certainly an anti-pattern. Here is one way to mitigate it -
Separate Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Deployment (CD) pipelines.
Have a separate process routing correct artifacts for environments (disclaimer: I'm biased towards the one we provide - https://relizahub.com, since I'm working on it; video how approvals are implemented - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzdZjMby6Is)
So essentially, what happens - you run CI pipeline, which create a deployment artifact. Then you have some approvals (manual and/or automated) which are recorded specifically on this artifact. Then you have a separate deployment pipeline which picks the right artifact and does the deployment. This way all pipelines are running quickly and you don't have to deal with pipeline runs stuck for a long time.
I am to build a test automation system for E2E testing for a company. The product is React/Node.JS based runs in a cloud (Docker & Kubernetes). The code is stored in GitLab repositories for which there are CI/CD pipelines setup for test/lint/deployment.
I plan to use Jest for test orchestration and Selenium / Appium for the UI testing (FRW being in TypeScript), while creating a generator to test our proprietary backend interface.
My code is in a similar repository and will be containerized and uploaded to the test environment.
In my former workplaces we used TeamCity and similar tools to manage test sessions but I do not seem to be able to find the perfect link between our already set up GitLab CI/CD and the E2E testing framework.
I know it could be implemented as part of the pipeline, but for me it seems lacking (which can also be because of my inexperience)
Could you advise some tools/methods for handling test session management for system testing in such an environment?
(with a GUI where I can see the progress of all sessions, being able to manage them, run / rerun / run on certain platforms only, etc)
I am working using TFS to create test case. I have a automated test written in Robotframework with Selenium2Library.
I'd like to be able to associate these tests with test cas in test. Is it possible to link the automated test cases with the test case in TFS, and if so, how is it done?
The web Test page does not support to run automatic tests associated with test cases in TFS.
You can achieve the same goals using the Build & Release features in Team Foundation Server (TFS). (https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/docs/test/lab-management/use-build-or-rm-instead-of-lab-management). Simply integrate Selenium testing into a continuous integration/continuous delivery pipeline.
Instead of build, suggest you use a step in a release pipeline. Take a look at this question:How can i run automated selenium tests using TFS build 2015?
More detail steps about how to integrate with TFS please go through the official tutorials from MSDN: Get started with Selenium testing in a CD pipeline
I have just started learning about test automation in Selenium and found out that most online tutorials would tell you to run the test suite inside an IDE together with a test framework such as TestNG (with testng.xml) and a build tool such as Maven.
When you are working in a software company and told to build a test framework and run automated tests, I don't believe you actually need to fire up your IDE every time you want to execute your test suite. So, my question is, what is the typical setup a software company follows to 'automate' running your test automation scripts?
Software companies are following agile practices and wanna keep up with industry practices. In real projects, CI & CD are used to continuously integrate, deploy and test the software.
Tests are written by SDET using test automation frameworks. While developing test scripts test developers use IDEs like eclipse. However, tests are executed over Jenkins as a job, after required frequency/event.
For example, after every code deployment, Jenkins can automatically trigger your sanity suite, and run regression bi-weekly.
The process' are automated now-a-days with stakeholders demanding agility.
One can invoke selenium java project from command line via .bat file in Jenkins, or using ant/maven as build tools.
IDEs are seldom used to run tests in real world.
I come from a configuration management background using tools like chef. I have done quite a bit of code testing. Recently, I have been entrusted with the responsibility to work on the CI-CD of the various applications. But I am noticing a culture that’s quite not in line with my ideology.
Let’s say we have 4 environments in the CI-CD pipeline: Dev, Test, Stage & Prod. The dev environment is used by the developers to deploy and test the app before rolling out to the next stage (test). The test env is for the QA team to run their test. And STAGE is another env for 2nd layer of test by the QA folks before the code goes to prod.
Now, does it make sense for the QA or the CI process to run unit test while progressing/after deploying the code to (TEST or STAGE)? I agree that the unit test should be a part of the automated build. But unit test is mainly for the developers, for their code testing. The QA should be focus on the functional testing, load testing etc.. using their frameworks which may be selenium/protractor or LISA. Why should they be focusing on junit or nunits?
From my experience the developers do the unit testing.
Where I currently work, we follow TDD (Test Driven Development) so developers write the unit tests for their code first and then they write the actual implementation. This work goes on the Dev environment.
The QA people then do the acceptance tests and review stuff.
I hope this helps.
Unit tests are short code fragments created by programmers or occasionally by white box testers during the development process. Unit tests are typically written and run by software developers to ensure that code meets its design and behaves as intended.
Hope you got the answer.
Your concern is absolutely right. QA does not necessarily be doing Unit Testing (If that's what you mean). This testing is done by dev while they were writing the code (if they were in TDD environment or even if in BDD).
However if QA has used Junit to write their Selenium automated test cases then they will be using Junit to update and change their automated test cases.
It's little difficult to automate Selenium test cases using Junit whereas using other framework like TestNG is the best option to write automation test cases for Selenium.
I hope this answer your question.