FAQs about LDTP

1. Is LDTP announced ?
Linux Desktop Testing Project (LDTP) was the first Test Automation Framework to use AT-SPI !!! LDTP has been open sourced 1 year back.

• LDTP 0.1.0 was anounced on Friday 28, January 2005
• LDTP was showcased and discussed in GUADEC'2005
• Published in opensourcetesting.org
• Published and discussed in Slashdot

2. Why is LDTP not part of the GNOME project ?
LDTP is Linux desktop agnostic. It aims at delivering an umbrella of test suites for Linux Desktop projects which includes the top ones like GNOME, KDE, Mozilla, OpenOffice.org etc. This increases wide-spread acceptance of LDTP as a de-facto desktop testing framework.
Based on the inputs recevied from some of the prominent members of the GNOME and KDE community, LDTP has been hosted on freedesktop.org
However, LDTP currently uses the GNOME bugzilla for bug tracking, thanks to Luis Villa for making this available.

3. How is LDTP different from other desktop testing frameworks ?
LDTP is a unique initiative to make Linux Desktops stable and rock solid by running them through rigorous suite of test conditions.
At the time of writing this document, some of the prominent features of LDTP include

• LDTP concepts are derived from Software Automation Framework Support
  
• LDTP supports verification of actions performed (GuiExist, VerifyState, etc)
• Writing test scripts are very easy, the script writer need not know about the object hierarchy
• CPU / Memory performance monitoring of application-under-test can be measured
• From the XML log, we can gather HTML report using XSLT
• Group based execution, which provides precise control on the flow of test-script execution
• User-friendly Test Editor with syntax highlighting for generating and grouping test data.

I believe that the goal of another desktop testing framework would be similar to that of LDTP and hence reduntant. I welcome everyone to join hands with the LDTP community and make it the de facto desktop testing framework for *nix platform. LDTP community has made 11 dot releases so far and is active.

4. How objects are identified by LDTP ?
LDTP identifies the object dynamically (by using remap) and statically (by using application map - appmap)

5. Who uses and supports LDTP ?
LDTP community include hackers from:

• GNOME QA community
• Mozilla QA community
• OpenOffice.org QA community
• KDE QA community
• Sun, Wipro, Novell/SuSE

And I see increasing number of participation every week in weekly community meetings.

It is great to note that the following have successfully deployed LDTP

• Evolution sanity scripts using LDTP project will be released by November end
• Tomato project is integrating LDTP to provide a common scripting environment for Windows and Linux QA script writers
• LDTP is being used for valgrinding Evolution
  

6. Does LDTP support platforms other than Linux ?

Yes, LDTP hackers from Sun Microsystems have successfully tested LDTP on Solaris. There are people trying to use LDTP on FreeBSD as well.