Re: Automate Emacs UI testing?

[joakim]

Richard Stallman <address@hidden> writes:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>   > - Isolate an Emacs build and environment in a Docker container
>   >   environment.
>
> Is Docker free software?

Yes, it is free software. Apache v2.

>
>   > - Make sikuli tests that test things like Helm and Yasnippets.
>
> What is a sikuli test?  Can they be done without using any nonfree
> software?

Yes, Sikuli if free software, MIT license.

A Sikuli test simulates what a user would do in terms of keyboard and
mouse input. Sikuli can then verify that the correct thing happened in
the application window, by analyzing what happened in the screen. The
novelty Sikuli adds over older such test systems is that Sikuli is
better at analyzing the screen bitmaps, because it uses a computer
vision library rather than just verifying on a pixel by pixel basis.

>
>   > - Do these tests on each commit in a Jenkins build server that I
>   >   have. It could be any build server with the right configuration though.
>
> It would not be good for our tests to depend on running on one particular 
> site.
> They should run on any GNU/Linux system, however it could be ok for some 
> tests to require loading certain well-known free software packages.

The tests should run on any environment that support Docker, which is
only free operating system AFAIK. (You can run parts of Docker on
non-free operating systems, but that is of no real concern for us I
would say)

An important thing Docker helps with is packaging software so that it is
easy to build and run the software. Dependencies can be clearly declared
so building a container is portable. One way to look at it is that
Docker is like a standardized chroot build and run environment. 


>
>   > Here is a container
>   >   with Sikuli that I havent tested: 
> https://hub.docker.com/r/kkochubey1/sikuli-chrome-x11vnc/
>
> Maybe I could find out some of those answers by looking around at that,
> but I have a feeling it would take hours to find them that way.

I hope this helps.


-- 
Joakim Verona