I'm trying to run Watin from within a TeamCity build, using nUnit.
All tests run fine locally. I know you cannot run the full Watin tests (i.e. POST) from TeamCity if it is running as a Windows Service. You must start the build agent from a .bat file.
But, I don't want to have to login to the server for it to start.
I've tried getting a Scheduled Task (in Windows Server 2008) to fire the agent.bat file on StartUp (not Login), but with no luck.
Has anyone else got Watin/TeamCity running from a Scheduled Task?
Thanks,
Pete
Check out the solution to doing this using CC.NET.
Watin Tests fail on CC.Net
Brett and I worked on this for awhile. The problem is that Windows Services running as a user cannot interact with the desktop, but because WatiN runs a real instance of the browser it requires a desktop to interact with. The solution in the link provided can show you how to do this.
Related
We have a testing framework made in AutoIt for our Windows apps (older legacy apps that we will continue supporting). These have never been run on a schedule or part of CI (always been run manually). I tried to get some kind of auto run (or even just status reporting) out of the tests, with minimal luck.
I have a VM where the tests can run. I experimented with my own web app, which works okay locally for running and status reporting. But when set up on the server, AutoIt reports it cannot open the application. Same thing happens if I try to run the tests from a .bat file.
My current solution is to have AutoIt call my web app to report status (working okay locally, untested on the server), or to see if I can get AutoIt to report results back to TeamCity. I have the agent installed but when I run the build from TeamCity, AutoIt reports it can't launch the application. I tried this while logged into the VM, logged out, with RDS open; no luck.
Is it possible to run the tests manually from the VM and send results back to TeamCity? When I run them from TeamCity it reads the AutoIt output (which is in the expected format), but I need to let TeamCity know to update the results (so we can use TeamCity rather than my web app to show the results).
I may need to find a way to let TeamCity know a build has been started, which might then let it know to keep an eye on the process' output, but I'm not positive. Any ideas?
I solved this so it could be done more traditionally.
If anyone is confused by what "running the agent from the console" meant, it just means installing the agent without selecting the "as a service" checkbox, and then manually starting the agent by cd'ing to the BuildAgent/bin directory and running the command agent start. I also created a batch file that will do this automatically (but you must run it as admin).
Further, I found AutoIt couldn't do anything if the test doesn't run from the right directory, so I had to devise a solution to this.
The only issue now is that I have to have an old laptop always connected to the virtual machine the tests and app run on (since the AutoIt tests won't work without the VM desktop being interactive).
Background:
With TestComplete 6 we have created a project which clicks few buttons in our application and performs few tasks. To automate it we have created a .bat file which installs our application (desktop) executes testexecute.exe in silentmode and uninstalls the application. This .bat file works fine when we execute it locally.
But when we execute this .bat file on a remote machine (teamcity agent) through teamcity I get "The 'My application' window is invisible and cannot be activated" error. Any UI action I try to execute fails because my application window in visible. It works fine till installing and starting my application, but once the application is started it can't execute any GUI task.
This weird behavior raised few doubts.
Why testexecute is unable to interact with the GUI?
Does the user account which teamcity uses to run testexecute.exe need special privileges on that machine?
How to execute TestExecute.exe on a remote machine and what things I need to take care of while doing it?
The TeamCity agent works as a system service which does not have access to GUI. This means that all processes invoked by it do not have access to GUI as well.
You can check the 'Run interactive' box for the agent service in the Services snap-in. However, you will still have to login to the machine in order to make the system to draw GUI and this will not guarantee that TestExecute will have enough permissions to access this GUI without any problems.
You need to find a way to run TeamCity build agent as an interactive app, not as a service.
You can also find more information on this topic here.
We are successfully using the Jenkins CI server on Windows 7. It mainly does compiles using CodeWarrior. Using the Win32::OLE library in Perl to automate the IDE, I recently added a new Unit Test job that compiles then also starts the debugger, runs a test thread on target hardware, then stops. It works fine when I start it from a command line under my user name, however when Jenkins starts the same task the IDE consumes all the CPU and never ends. Under the Windows Task Manager I see the IDE running as a SYSTEM user. I suspect there's a new pop-up message I haven't accounted for in my OLE automation, but can't see it because it's a background task now.
Is there a tool or technique to help debug windows that Jenkins starts as a system user but aren't visible?
You need to run Jenkins not as a Windows service, and then you should see the IDE pop up on your desktop.
Im working with VS2010 and TFS and the Coded UI tests (CUIT).
I created some CUIT and added them to several Test Cases in Microsoft Test Manager 2010.
These tests are executed in our build-deploy-test steps.
This looks as follows (simplified):
Build application
Deploy
2a. Set snapshot of the Virtual Machine to which the application will be deployed to the snapshot in which the application is not installed
2b. Install application
Run tests
Step 3 contains Coded UI tests, but they cannot be executed (will fail), since there is no active remote desktop connection, which they need to be executed.
Now I would like to add a build step 2c. That automatically connects to the Remote Desktop so that the Coded UI Tests kan be executed.
How should I create this step in the Process Template?
I attempted this myself by running a PowerShell script to connect to a machine via Remote Desktop (see here to see how to use the Remote Desktop command-line utility).
This didn't really work for me personally because I was running this script from the build machine - which I could only connect to via Remote Desktop - and so when I close Remote Desktop it would close the session on the build machine and thus I would not be able to obtain a remote desktop connection with my test environment (plus it wasn't ideal to have to launch Remote Desktop from the build machine).
Therefore, the solution I went with instead was to enable auto-logon on the test environment (there are various ways to do this, I can't remember how I did it, but it's easily Googled).
So in my PowerShell script, which launched from our build machine, I used a command to remotely restart the test environment. With auto-logon enabled, the test environment would start back up with an active session, then I could carry on with Visual Studio Coded UI testing. This worked for me without any issues.
The command I used was something like this:
Shutdown.exe /r \\mytestenvironment
Here is some documentation for it.. If you intend on using this command to remotely restart a computer, don't forget to give your machine permissions on the test environment, otherwise this command won't work.
I then launched a command to sleep for a few minutes, to give time for the remote test environment to start back up again (with an active session), then I launched the tests.
Personally, I used a PowerShell script but you could also use a DOS/Batch script if you are more familiar with that.
Also, are you trying to run the automated tests as part of a build process template?
Let me know if you need any further help.
I am using Jenkins as my CI build server. After a build of our software is complete it starts up the automated tests on a slave machine. The tests that use a web browser run at a very good pace, the tests that run on two different local applications run very slowly. It takes about 3 seconds between each keystroke.
If I start the tests manually through Visual Studio 2010 on the same slave machine the local application test run just fine (fast keystrokes).
Any idea why the local apps are so slow when run through Jenkins?
I'm not sure if this is the same case, but we had similar issues with an automated UI test, and found that we must have a real session open on the slave running the test. NOT RDP.
We did this by using VNC to login to the slave and leave the session open.
I hope this helps.