Nagappan's weblog

11th day of fasting - India against corruption

2011-08-25T11:15:00.000-07:00

Anna Hazare the man behind India against corruption movement is fasting for the past 11 days to implement Jan Lokpal Bill in India.

Wow ! I'm amazed, fasting just one day is really hard for me, but this 74 year old man fasting for 11 days. His health condition is good, he walks, talks.

ITR with LibreOffice [India]

2011-07-27T10:47:00.000-07:00

Kindly note that the ITR1 form for filing income tax returns is successfully migrated to LibreOffice / OpenOffice for this year (Assessment year 2011-2012) and available on the same site, http://freedom-matters.in . Kindly spread the word.

The goal of this endeavour is that no person who wants to file ITR and does not have MS Excel should suffer because of this partiality by the Government. But we are still a long way from this. The problem is, every year the form changes, since tax rules change, so this migration is going to be difficult in future. We need to get the Government / IT Department to stop favouring MS Excel. They are only making it harder for non-MS Office users. Kindly lets continue this discussion and effort to put pressure on the concerned people to make a change in this department.

Announce: Mago New development release

2011-01-25T10:44:00.000-08:00

On behalf of Jean-Baptiste Lallement:

We are pleased to announce the new development release of Mago.

This release has seen a lot of changes and improvements to make Linux
automated desktop testing easier and enable more people to contribute
writing tests and aiming to high quality desktop applications.

Key features included in this version:
- Separation between the framework and the tests
- Support for standard gnome dialogs and authentication
- Easy configuration of the tests with configuration files
- Support for the latest version of LDTP
- Direct interaction with Window Manager via XLib
- Image matching testing with XPresser
- Easy and flexible collect and run with Nose
- Testtools to extend python unittest
- The documentation now uses Sphinx
- Magomatic to generate application map

You want to contribute to the effort?
You can download the source from bazaar at https://launchpad.net/mago

The testsuite is available from lp:~mago-contributors/mago/mago-testsuite

Note that this version is not compatible with the previous version of
mago which is still available from lp:~mago-contributors/mago/mago-1.0

Mailing List:
http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-testing-list

IRC:
#ubuntu-testing in irc.freenode.org
#gnome-testing in irc.gnome.org

Thanks to all the people who contributed fixes, features and lot of tests.

Announce: Linux Desktop Testing Project (LDTP) 2.1.0 released

2011-01-25T10:37:00.000-08:00

Changes in this release:

Added documentation files from LDTPv1 and updated accordingly

Search object name as unicode character and mutliline

Print Unicode exception, instead of string. Printing string fails, if non-ascii strings are in exception string

Performance improvement:

When looking for object inside a window without any delay, utilize all the CPU, just delay the lookup every 2 seconds

Don't force remap on gechild, getobjectlist, getobjectproperty, unless the window object is changed, as this utilizes more CPU

New API:

getmax - Get max value of spin button

getmin - Get min value of spin button

startlog - Start logging to file

stoplog - Stop logging to file

startprocessmonitor - Start monitoring the given process

stopprocessmonitor - Stop monitoring the given process

getcpustat - Get the current CPU statistics of the given process

getmemorystat - Get the current memory statistics of the given process

registerkbevent - Register keyboard event

deregisterkbevent - De-Register keyboard event

getobjectnameatcoords - Get window / object name in LDTP format based on the current mouse co-ordinates

Bugs fixed:

619575: Raise a more descriptive error when a child is not found

620343: setcellvalue is not implemented in LDTP2

624690: LDTP2.0.6 cannot type comma ', ' use function 'enterstring'

624678: Cannot identifiy some dialogs of OpenOffice3.2

635047: 'comboselect' doesn't work when specify component name listed in 'getobjectlist'

638229 - onwindowcreate fails with CannotSendRequest with python2.7

638226 - Missing import socket in ldtp/__init__.py

Special thanks:

Ara Pulido, JB Lallement - Ubuntu Mago team

Eitan Isaacson

Brian Nitz - Oracle / Sun

Download source here

Download RPM / deb

Hudson X11 Automated GUI Testing

2010-09-21T17:47:00.000-07:00

Hudson X11 Automated Testing - To run GUI automated test in Hudson environment. Ara Pulido, demonstrated me, how to setup Hudson and to run some Mago test. The tests were failing, as the ldtp daemon failed to load. When I started poking, I found, the tests can run only in console mode. We need to start a X session, then need to start the test. Even, after this, the tests were failing. Setting DISPLAY doesn't help ! Accessing accessibility service from terminal failed, as AT_SPI_IOR not set from the terminal.

To overcome, this issue, implemented a service and a client, the service runs during the gnome-session startup.

The service (UNIX socket) listens for commands from client, once received execute them in the shell and returns back both stdout and stderr. Just one command per request, not to make things complicated ;-)

During the test, X session will be started with Xvfb, need to evaluate X dummy driver instead. Accessibility, should be enabled and gnome screen saver, should be disabled, before starting the test. Requirement for LDTP tests.

More about this, available here (documented by Ara) and here, also FAQ

Note: Currently tested with GNOME Desktop on Ubuntu Linux using Mago and LDTP from GIT head

Special thanks to Ara Pulido (Ubuntu), Brian Nitz (Sun / Oracle) and Tyller Ballance (Hudson team)

Nautilus automated test script under Mago applications

2010-07-01T11:37:00.000-07:00

As part of an effort to expand Mago a bit by adding nautilus, Jeff Lane from Ubuntu created a launchpad team called mago-applications. It was created to let people interested in adding new applications to Mago collaborate on the same code bases without cluttering up the mago-contributors team.

The way we see it, mago-applications can focus on simply adding new application interfaces and test suites/cases to Mago, while mago-contributors can focus on the core Mago code making sure it works with the latest changes to LDTP and so forth.

So, if you're interested in adding applications to Mago, feel free to join:

https://launchpad.net/~mago-applications

Feel free to create your own branches there to add new apps to Mago, there are plenty that can be added to enhance desktop testing of Ubuntu!

Also, adding an application is a good way to get some experience adding to a project that uses Python, is OO based, complex, and useful!

Announce: Linux Desktop Testing Project (LDTP) 2.0.4 released

2010-03-25T23:44:00.000-07:00

Changes in this release:

LDTPv2 hang in Ubuntu 10.04 is fixed
Don't navigate table cell, as it causes more resource and time in OpenOffice calc
Added new API simulatemousemove for DnD test (VMware Workstation / Player Unity-GHI feature)
Patch by Ara Pulido for b.g.o bug # 612311
Listen all Window events, else new application like Firefox is not listed
waittillguiexist now can wait for state as well
hasstate can wait for given time till the state is True

Special thanks to Eitan Isaacson [1], Ara Pulido [2], James Tatum [3], Anupa Kamath [VMware, India], Slava Podokshik [VMware, USA]

Download source:
http://download.freedesktop.org/ldtp/2.x/2.0.x/ldtp-2.0.4.tar.gz

Download RPM from
http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/anagappan:/ldtp2:/rpm/
Will schedule deb build in openSUSE build service tomorrow

For detailed information on LDTP framework and latest updates visit http://ldtp.freedesktop.org

For information on various APIs in LDTP including those added for this release can be got from http://ldtp.freedesktop.org/user-doc/index.html

Report bugs - http://ldtp.freedesktop.org/wiki/Bugs

IRC Channel - #ldtp on irc.freenode.net

[1] - http://monotonous.org/
[2] - http://ubuntutesting.wordpress.com/
[3] - https://launchpad.net/~jtatum

Announce: Linux Desktop Testing Project (LDTP) 2.0.2 released

2010-01-26T22:13:00.001-08:00

Hello,

About LDTP:

Linux Desktop Testing Project is aimed at producing high quality test automation framework (using GNOME / Python) and cutting-edge tools that can be used to test Linux Desktop and improve it. It uses the Accessibility libraries to poke through the application's user interface. We strive to help in building a quality desktop.

Changes in this release:

Fixed ldtp binary name and now it spits out the version info
Updated README and AUTHORS file
Fixed OpenSolaris bug reported by Qinghua Cheng

Acknowledgement:

Ara Pulido[1] requested the above change for backward compatibility. Thanks to Ara, Conny.

Download RPM from http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/anagappan:/ldtp2:/rpm
Will schedule deb build tomorrow

Download source http://download.freedesktop.org/ldtp/2.x/2.0.x/ldtp-2.0.2.tar.gz

Documentation references:

For detailed information on LDTP framework and latest updates visit http://ldtp.freedesktop.org

For information on various APIs in LDTP including those added for this release can be got from http://ldtp.freedesktop.org/user-doc/index.html

Report bugs - http://ldtp.freedesktop.org/wiki/Bugs

To subscribe to LDTP mailing lists, visit http://ldtp.freedesktop.org/wiki/Mailing_20list

IRC Channel - #ldtp on irc.freenode.net

Thanks
Nagappan

[1] - http://ubuntutesting.wordpress.com/

Announce: Linux Desktop Testing Project (LDTP) 2.0.1 released

2010-01-18T21:02:00.000-08:00

Hello all,

LDTPv2 a complete rewrite of LDTPv1 in Python. This release is dedicated to Eitan Isaacson[1]. Eitan wrote the LDTPv2 framework and important API's in LDTPv2 !

My co-workers in VMware Ranjith Murugan, Gaurav Sharma and Anupa Kamath, did a wonderful job in verifying the compatibility of LDTPv1 and v2. Special thanks to them and my manager Greg McShea on supporting this effort.

Special thanks to Ara Pulido[2] for tracking the LDTPv2 status and pushing us to make the release at the earliest, as Ara wants to include LDTPv2 in Ubuntu Lucid, before feature freeze.

Following are the difference between LDTPv1 and v2:

* getlabel function is deprecated - you can use getobjectproperty('winodw', 'objectname', 'label') # To verify the display text
* Label in v2 doesn't return the accelerator key (eg: in v1 "_Find" will be returned on v2 just "Find" is returned)
* Strict data types are checked, in v1 most of the inputs are considered as string, if not they will be converted to string, but on v2 exception will be
thrown, if incorrect type is passed to any function * In v1 we have ldtp binary, on v2 we need to check ldtpd.sh for now, this doesn't return the version for now, it has to be implemented, if you check for "ldtp --version" in v1
* In v1 each action command was given 1 second sleep time internally before execution, but on v2 there is no delay unless its set in environment variable LDTP_COMMAND_DELAY. So, the script has to use appropriate wait time
* As Javier (from Ubuntu QA team) found, launchapp, argument name changed from 'arg' to 'args'

Some of missing API in v2:

* Calendar object
* logFailures in v1 is not implemented in v2
* LDTP logging methods
* appundertest
* launchapp2
* blackoutregion
* label object
* panel object
* ProcessStatistics

LTFX is completely removed in LDTP v2 in favor of wnck implmentation

Download LDTPv2 source from http://download.freedesktop.org/ldtp/2.x/2.0.x/ldtp2-2.0.1.tar.gz

New dependency:

python-twisted-web
python-pyatspi
python-gtk
python-gnome

Will schedule binary package building for different Linux distribution using openSUSE Build Service - http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/anagappan:/ldtp2:/

Documentation references:

For detailed information on LDTP framework and latest updates visit http://ldtp.freedesktop.org

For information on various APIs in LDTP including those added for this release can be got from http://ldtp.freedesktop.org/user-doc/index.html

Report bugs - http://ldtp.freedesktop.org/wiki/Bugs

To subscribe to LDTP mailing lists, visit http://ldtp.freedesktop.org/wiki/Mailing_20list

IRC Channel - #ldtp on irc.freenode.net

Thanks
Nagappan

[1] - http://monotonous.org/
[2] - http://ubuntutesting.wordpress.com/

Call for LDTPv2 (Linux Desktop Testing Project) testing

2009-10-02T18:56:00.000-07:00

We are in the process of migrating all our existing LDTP API based on CSPI (LDTPv1) to pyatspi (LDTPv2).

LDTPv2 framework was written by "Eitan Isaacson". Thanks to eeejay :)

In VMware, we have tested the LDTPv2 API's. Thanks to Ranjith Murugan, Gaurav Sharma, Anupa Kamath for verifying them.

I'm sure still there are some pending API's which has to implemented or some API's which are not compatible with LDTPv1 in LDTPv2. I request to all the users, to verify LDTPv2 in their test environment and report any issues you found. We have tested on Ubuntu 9.04 with Python 2.6. It will be nice, if you could test it on Python 2.4 / 2.5 / 3.0 as well.

New LDTPv2 dependency - twisted-python-web package.

Access LDTPv2 source through git: git://anongit.freedesktop.org/ldtp/ldtp2 or ssh://git.freedesktop.org/git/ldtp/ldtp2 or http://anongit.freedesktop.org/git/ldtp/ldtp2.git

Browse the LDTPv2 source online - http://cgit.freedesktop.org/ldtp/ldtp2/tree/

Mago – Gran Canaria Desktop Summit

2009-07-02T21:21:00.000-07:00

Ara Pulido will be presenting Mago in Gran Canaria Desktop summit. Eitan Isaacson will also be attending the conference.

Eitan has done all the base ground work for LDTPv2. Eitan also did the ground work with Javier and Ara on Mago too :) alrounder !!!

Any one interested in GNOME / KDE automated testing, I recommend you to attend the session by Ara.

Happy hacking Ara, Eitan.

Clonezilla - Linux and Windows imaging

2009-06-21T14:36:00.000-07:00

In VMware, Palo Alto, we evaluated Clonezilla for Imaging different Linux distributions like openSUSE, SLED, Ubuntu, RHEL, Fedora, Madriva. Some success stories:

Took Ubuntu image on DELL 390 Intel single processor, first hard disk and restored it in HP AMD Athlon Dual processor, second hard disk using Clonezilla Live CD and worked awesome ! The restore times took approx 2 minutes 12 seconds. The system is usable now ! wow !! I didn't expect this to work, to be frank :) This is with regular partition.

Also, tried with Fedora LVM image, with different hard disk size, this failed, I assume this is due to LVM, though I'm not sure.

Next tried creating Windows XP SP2 32bit image from DELL 390 and deployed it on DELL 3400 based on the info available here and here and it worked amazingly !

Great work Clonezilla team

Clonezilla imaging solution - Better than Altiris imaging solution

2009-06-12T18:06:00.000-07:00

Today at work I tried creating an Ubuntu image from DELL 390 and restored the image on DELL 3400 using Clonezilla Live CD and everything worked seamlessly !

In our Desktop (Workstation) team setup, we have our NFS server hosted, just pointed this server to the Clonezilla Live CD for saving and restoring the image. NFS Server located in first floor of the building and the test machine is on the same building, second floor.

Some interesting points:

Tried Ubuntu image with 2.1 GB of data with two partitions (/dev/sda1 - ext3, actual partition size 153 GB and /dev/sda5 is swap of 6 GB)

* Saving this image took 2 minutes 15 seconds to store on the NFS Server (DELL 390)

* Restoring this image took 2 minutes 10 seconds from the NFS Server (DELL 3400)

Well, if you want to setup Clonezilla you need to have:

* NFS Server or SSH Server or another local hard disk (Read more on Clonezilla web site)

* Clonezilla live CD

I’m amazed by the performance ! and you ?

Mago – A Desktop Testing Initiative

2009-06-11T19:05:00.000-07:00

A project announcement from Ara Pulido today. Automated testing for GNOME and KDE (as soon as AT-SPI gets migrated to D-BUS) using LDTP !!!

More info here. Congratulations to the team, good work.

Harshini Nagappan

2009-05-31T22:13:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday May 27, 2009 me and my wife are blessed with baby girl Harshini Nagappan !!! Both baby and Mom are doing good :)

Racetrack Repository

2009-05-25T21:13:00.000-07:00

Racetrack is a designed to store and display the results of automated tests. At VMware, over 2,000,000 test results have been stored in Racetrack Repository. Over 25 different teams use the repository to report results. It has a very simple data model, just three basic tables. ResultSet (stores information about a set of tests (Product, Build, etc.) Result, which stores information about the testcase itself, and ResultDetail, which stores the details of each verification performed within the test. ResultDetails also include screenshots and log files, make it easy for the triage engineer to determine the cause of the failure.

We are very excited to offer Racetrack to the public as an Open Source project. It offers complete visibility on test results to the organization, much more than Pass/Fail. QA Engineers, Developers, QA Managers, Project Managers all find it useful to quickly see the results of Basic Acceptance Tests, available within an hour of the build completing. Racetrack Triage Report makes it easy to see the number of defects found by a set of tests, and the number of failures caused by Product Changes, and Script failures. By adding a reference to your Bugzilla and Build systems, you can easily provide links directly from Racetrack to a defect or a build information page. The Web Services API is already part of the package, and SilkTest and Java APIs will be added shortly.

Announce: Linux Desktop Testing Project 1.6.0 released

2009-05-11T20:51:00.000-07:00

New LDTP API:

Progress bar verification
Layered pane (For nautilus drag and drop testing,
will be used for VMware Workstation automation)

Bug fixes:

578609 - LDTP should use LOGNAME instead of (or in addition to) USER
553747 - cannot click window itself
579027 - onwindowcreate expects a _NON_ stripped window title
575120 - component should have a getrole() method (ooldtp.py)
573103 - ldtpeditor could not find glade file 'ldtpeditor.glade'
547572 - Components should be exposed in a hierarchical way

Special thanks to Willi Walker, Anupa Kamath ,
Ara Pulido, Sandro Millien , Guofu Xu,
Szilárd Pfeiffer 

Download Source from here
Solaris package from Sparc / x86
Binary (openSUSE / Ubuntu / Fedora / Debian / RHEL /
CentOS / Mandriva) from here

Eitan Isaacson  has started LDTPv2, a complete rewrite of LDTP
in python using pyatspi, soon this will be available through
ldtp.fd.o git repository. For now you can access them from here

Announcement: gnome-desktop-testing - New features

2009-04-01T11:17:00.000-07:00

Today there was an announcement from Ara

New features in gnome-desktop-testing

* Eitan (eeejay) added a new option to bin/desktop-testing to choose a particular test case to run
* Javier (jcollado) moved constants from gnome_constants.py to gnome.py (gnome_constants.py is now deprecated)
* Ara (ara) changed that report.xsl stylesheet to report also the errors during cleanup(), setupup() or teardown() methods.

These changes are already in the trunk branch of gnome-desktop-testing

Announce: New GNOME desktop testing framework

2009-03-20T13:54:00.000-07:00

Ara Pulido have published the new framework to the main branch of gnome-desktop-testing module. Special thanks to Eitan (designed and implemented most of the new framework)

Grab the latest code and start writing tests!

Ara have also updated the documentation:

1) http://live.gnome.org/DesktopTesting/Documentation/GettingStarted/CreateNewTests
This document explain the process to create a new Test Suite based on already available applications in the framework.
2) http://live.gnome.org/DesktopTesting/Documentation/GettingStarted/AddNewApplications
Read this document, if you want to extend the framework with new applications
3) http://live.gnome.org/DesktopTesting/Documentation/Design
This is the framework design document. Read it if you want to help hacking the framework or to know more about the internals.

Congratulation to Ara and Eitan for your hard work !

GNOME Desktop Testing new framework

2009-03-13T07:38:00.000-07:00

Eitan Isaacson and Ara Pulido had discussion about a new design for gnome desktop testing and the initial version of code is available here and the spec of the same is available here. Soon it will be merged back to main line.

We welcome all your suggestions.

Ara will be publishing templates of writing new test scripts and also planing to create a new VM with latest gnome and all required settings for automation.

GNOME Desktop Testing discussion

2009-03-13T07:19:00.000-07:00

I'm now in Ubuntu QA Sprint, UK. Ara Pulido and Henrik invited me to attend this conference.

The discussion was mostly on gnome-desktop-testing effort and moving forward.

More info here Very useful discussion we had. More news will follow shortly :)

Special thanks to my manager Greg McShea and director Melissa Gracely in VMware supporting me to attend this conference.

Automated Tests For Anjuta

2009-03-13T07:07:00.000-07:00

Automated tests for Anjuta (ATFA in short) by Sandro Millien, a great start ! There are some minor issues in Anjuta as not all the widget has accessibility information and when a11y is enabled the response of opening a new window is slow. Wish soon they are fixed, which will standarize the script writing process.

Good news is, ATFA uses LDTP ;)

Announce: Linux Desktop Testing Project 1.5.1 released

2009-03-13T06:57:00.000-07:00

LDTP 1.5.1 is mainly a bug fix release

* Bug 574791 – ldtputils.captureimage() ignores coordinate arguments
* Bug 574793 – Use wnck to get window id instead of LTFX (digwin)
* Bug 574787 – LDTP package is not installing correctly
* Bug 574789 – getwindowlist (and others?) don't handle utf8 well

Special thanks to Eitan Isaacson, Ara Pulido and Michael Terry

Source / Binary / Solaris package

GNOME Desktop Testing - Project annoucement

2009-02-10T14:05:00.000-08:00

We are proud to announce that a new GNOME team has been created, focused on desktop testing automation. If you have ever wondered how could you test your application writing scripts that mimic what a normal user would do, join us in this new effort.

We have a mailing list, a wiki page with documentation and a SVN module with the initial work that we have done, but we need more people to get involve to make GNOME better and better.

Please, join now the GNOME Desktop Testing team!

Still not sure? Here you will find a small how-to on how to run the available examples. Just give it a go!

A big thanks to Christian Rose for setting up the Mailing List and GNOME SVN a/c for us. I have really bugged Owen Taylor / Federico all the time on IRC. Thanks to both of them answering all my queries, all the time :)

Announce: Linux Desktop Testing Project 1.5.0 released

2009-02-10T11:37:00.001-08:00

Whats new in this release:

Log all failures and take screenshot on each failure - b.g.o # 567589
Create default log file in /tmp/ldtp-$USER
Screenshot using pygtk, instead of ImageMagick import, when possible
Added new api - appundertest

Bug fixes:

b.g.o # 566048
bugs.fd.o # 19813

Special thanks to Ara Pulido and others as well:

Sandro MILLIEN
Lijun Huang
Guofu Xu
Nathan Samson

LDTP news:

GNOME Desktop Testing Project uses LDTP
Automated Tests For Anjuta

Download source tarball
Binary (openSUSE / Ubuntu / Fedora / Debian / RHEL / CentOS / Mandriva) - openSUSE build service

Announce: Linux Desktop Testing Project 1.4.0 released

2008-12-05T13:42:00.000-08:00

After 3 months of work from LDTP 1.3.0 release, we are pleased to announce LDTP 1.4.0. Special thanks to Guofu Xu of Access Company (Palm Source).

Major things about this release:

* New API's required for VMware Workstation automation, thanks to Arvind Patil, Anupa Kamath
* Performance enhancement patches, thanks to Guofu Xu
* LDTP editor now supports configuration file for settings, thanks to Shreyank Gupta
* LDTP is now packaged for Fedora 10, thanks to Debarshi Ray

Thanks to Ara Pulido and Marc Tardif of Ubuntu for reportings bugs in LDTP.

More news to follow ;-)

VMware workstation automated test using LDTP

2008-10-22T10:45:00.001-07:00

Its a pleasure to announce this news !!! VMware Workstation and Player on Linux are now automated using Linux Desktop Testing Project (LDTP). We have approximately 700 test scripts running twice a week on RHEL5.x / Ubuntu 8.04 host (both 32 and 64 bit hardware). Need to add SLED10 host in the list. In the guest matrix, we run the test on RHEL5.x / SLED10 / Ubuntu 7.04 / Ubuntu 8.04 / Win2K (both 32 and 64 bit VMs).

Ubuntu automation test using LDTP

2008-10-20T14:21:00.000-07:00

Its a pleasure to announce this news !!! Ubuntu QA team is using Linux Desktop Testing Project (LDTP) to test the package manager and other GNOME applications.

Ara Pulido is the main developer from Ubuntu, who has developed the framework on top of LDTP to test the GNOME applications in Ubuntu environment.

For more info, check out here

Announce: Linux Desktop Testing Project 1.3.0 released

2008-09-03T13:30:00.000-07:00

Cool new features "Generation of OO based LDTP code" and "Generation of * in window title" by Shreyank Gupta. Both the features were implemented in LDTP Editor code base. Thanks for his contribution.

Other interesting things to share about this release:
* Ubuntu QA team has adopted LDTP as their testing tool. Thanks to Ara and his team members, supporting LDTP, with good number of bug reports and feature suggestions :)
* VMware Workstation and Player automation are done using LDTP ! Thanks to Shang Wang, Gaurav Sharma, Ranjith Murugan for their contributions
* From IBM, Germany, Philipp Wagner has filed couple of intersting bugs, which were very critical. With his reports, he was able to automate Thunderbird, Gantt chart using LDTP.

Thanks to Kartik Mistry for updating the Debian packages, Ara Pulido and his team for updating Ubuntu packages, Navtej Singh for updating Gentoo packages.

You can download binary / source code from here

Supported binaries: RHEL5.x - CentOS 5.x - Ubuntu 7.04/7.10/8.04 - OpenSuSE 10.2/10.3/11.0/Factory - SLE10 - Fedora 8/9 - Madriva 2007/2008 - Debian Etch. Credit goes to OpenSuSE build service team !!!

Announce: Linux Desktop Testing Project 1.2.0 released

2008-07-08T22:18:00.000-07:00

Highlights of this release
* Performance fix, which improves the LDTP execution time drastically
* 3 crasher fixes in LDTP execution engine
* LDTP editor bug fixes reported by Shreyank Gupta
* Added 2 new API required for VMware Workstation automation
* API manual is updated
* Moved from CVS to GIT - Thanks to FreeDesktop administrators
* Thanks to Ubuntu automation team for using / evaluating LDTP
* LDTP is being evaluated by the project Open Source based Desktop Benchmark of the Linux Solutions Group e.V. (LiSoG) in Germany, Switzerland and Austria

Download source

Announce: Linux Desktop (GUI Application) Testing Project - LDTP 1.0.0 release

2008-02-24T22:32:00.000-08:00

New features of this release:
* Object Oriented LDTP (Documentation will be published soon)
* LDTP Editor (Record / Playback). Again documentation on the way. For now you can refer Record HOWTO.

Credits:

* Prasad of Evolution team. He has tested LDTP editor extensively and reported all the issues, he faced.
* LDTP editor initial code contributed by Thanumalayan and Vinod Kumar.

Source / Binary (OpenSuSE 10.2, 10.3, Factory, Fedora 6, 7, 8, RHEL 5, CentOS 5 - x86 / x86_64)

More updates soon.

Create desktop testing suite (GHOP)

2007-12-13T15:27:00.000-08:00

Its great to see Linux Desktop Testing Project part of GNOME's GHOP !!!

Create desktop testing suite initiated under GHOP GNOME. Thanks to Nickolay for intiating this task. I will give my complete support to the student Ninjatails. Thanks to Andre Clapper pointing me the issue.

BTW, I have Left Novell, India by first week of November and relocated to California, US. I will continue doing LDTP :)

Grand Central is really Grand

2007-12-13T14:44:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I was trying different things with Google's Grand Central. Its really cool. I have configured my office number and Gizmo number in Grand Central. I called my cousin in Singapore from my laptop !!!

Nonoh.net provides a service to call many countries for free. I have used the source number as my Grand Central number and destination as my cousin's Singapore number. Nonoh.net called my Grand Central number and it redirects to my Gizmo. The voice quality was really cool.

Inspired by many articles published in Vinay's blog VOIP Guides.

Vote Logo for GNOME Asia Summit

2007-12-07T11:46:00.000-08:00

Today Emily Chen has blogged about Vote Logo for GNOME Asia summit. I have voted my choice :)

Direct link

Linux Desktop Testing Project editor

2007-11-09T13:31:00.000-08:00

A nice post by Hari, Thanks for your nice post.

Want to use LDTP to test your application? Or do you want to automate the actions you do often? Or are you a GNU/Linux user who want to show “magic” to your friends by recording your actions and playing them back? You can use LDTP for this. But one small issue with LDTP is that you should know the LDTP Python API to write any test suite. But with the new LDTP Editor, this makes your job really simple. A screenshot of the LDTP Editor is shown below.

This is a simple HOWTO for recording and playing back the recorded script.

Installing LDTP.

Download the lastest LDTP source code from http://people.freedesktop.org/~nagappan/ldtp-0.9.2.tar.gz.
Uncompress the file.
Compile the code using ./configure and make
If you don’t have the access to install softwares, run the ldtpeditor file in the python folder
If you have access to install softwares, then run “make install”

Note:: After installing LDTP Editor, i when i tried to run ldtpeditor, got an error saying

hari@hari-laptop:~/ldtp/ldtp-0.9.2$ ldtpeditor (ldtpeditor:11130): libglade-WARNING **: could not find glade file '/usr/share/local/ldtp/glade/ldtpeditor.glade' Glade file not found

The ldtpeditor.glade file is present in the python folder. I got this error because i compiled the code as ./configure. If i had done it as ‘./configure –prefix=/usr’, then i wouldn’t have got this error. Anyway i copied the file manually to that folder.

hari@hari-laptop:~/ldtp/ldtp-0.9.2$ sudo mkdir -p /usr/share/local/ldtp/glade/ hari@hari-laptop:~/ldtp/ldtp-0.9.2$ sudo cp python/ldtpeditor.glade /usr/share/local/ldtp/glade/ hari@hari-laptop:~/ldtp/ldtp-0.9.2$ ldtpeditor

After that when i ran ldtpeditor, it ran without any issues.

Recording using LDTP Editor

For this let us consider recording the actions performed in gcalctool.

First make sure Assistive Technology is enabled in your desktop. If you are not sure about this, open gnome-control-center and in that open Assistive Technology Preferences. You should have Enable Assistive Technologies checked to use LDTP.
If you are enabling Assistive Technology only now, logout and login again.
Run ldtpeditor and gcalctool.
Make sure both you have enabled ‘Always on Top’ or both the applications and both the window doesn’t overlap with each other.
Click the Start button the LDTP Editor. All actions performed after this are recorded.
Perform actions in the gcalctool. Check out this video to see the actions i recored in my computer .
After you’re done with the actions in the gcalctool, click the Stop button in the LDTP Editor.
You can see that the ‘Recorded Code’ tab is updated with code as when you perform actions in gcalctool.
Click the convert button in the LDTP Editor. You’ll see that the Generated LDTP Code and Generated LDTP XML tabs are filled with generated code.
The Play button is not working now. I wrote the patch for that yesterday night ;-).
Save the contents of the ‘Generated LDTP Code’ into a python file (for ex frisco.py) . Note that if the file name you specify already exists, then it OVERWRITES the filename without any warning.
Then run hari@hari-laptop:~$ python frisco.py
The actions you performed while recording will be played back again :-)

Currently the Play button in the LDTP Editor is not enabled. But you can make it work by applying the patch mentioned below. I guess this patch will be added to LDTP Editor in a week or so. So check the ChangeLog file before applying the patch.

LDTP Editor Preferences

Using the LDTP Prefereces, you can control what all actions you can control. A brief summary about the options given in the Preferences window.

Listen key events
This option is not yet implemented. Checking/Unchecking this doesn’t make any difference now.
Listen mouse events
This option is not yet implemented. Checking/Unchecking this doesn’t make any difference now.
Generate LDTP Code
Only when if this option is enabled, Convert will generated to LDTP code in the ‘Generated LDTP Code’ tab. This is enabled by default when you run LDTP Editor.
Generate Data XML
If this option is enabled, the LDTP Editor will generate data XML for the actions you perform.
Generate keyboard events code
Generates code for the keyboard events you performed during the recording session.
Generate wait time code
Calculates the delay one takes between each action during the recording session and generates code so that similar time delay is generated while play back.
Generate Memory / CPU statistics.
The code to generate Memory and CPU statistics will be generated. You need to install pystatgrab and libstatgrab packages.

Patching to make the Run button work

Copy this patch file to your ldtp folder.
Runhari@hari-laptop:~/ldtp/ldtp-0.9.2$ cd ldtp-0.9.2 hari@hari-laptop:~/ldtp/ldtp-0.9.2$ patch -p0 <>
Compile the code again and run ldtpeditor. This time after you Convert the Code, you can Run the code from the LDTP Editor. :-)

Note:: The generated code had many unwanted waittillguiexist. I saw waittillguiexist(”dlg0″) in many places. If your playback is stopped because of this, remove that before running the scripts.
Sometime the resource will go high as the application map info is collected from the application, so no need to worry.

If you find any issues regarding LDTP Editor, report it to ldtp-dev@lists.freedesktop.org or nagappan@gmail.com or sp2hari@gmail.com

All patches are welcome. :-)

My comments:

You can use ./configure --prefix=/usr to avoid that glade file missing warning.

Additional notes:

* After clicking record click 'Convert' to get the code converted in LDTP format (It does some post processing, so its required)
* Click save button to save generated python script, if 2nd tab is empty, then it will try to get the contents of first tab and store it in the file you specify. If file already exist, it will *OVER-WRITE*
* control+c, control+v doesn't work
* Sometime the resource will go high as the application map info is collected from the application, so no need to worry. With Thunderbird, the recording really sucks
* You need to have GNOME 2.14 and above to use LDTP editor

Random updates

2007-10-01T10:25:00.000-07:00

* Moved from emacs to MonoDevelop for my Mono development ! I started liking it very much, few random crashes happen, when accessibility is enabled in GTK layer. I should log a bug on them (soon).
* LDTP packages are now available for Debian, Ubuntu apart from OpenSuSE, Fedora, Mandriva. Thanks to Karik Mistry :)
* Under Mono System.Data API compatibility is 97% in 2.0 profile, now targeting 99% within this month end. Me and Varadhan will be working on this target.
* Updated the work system from OpenSUSE 10.2 to 10.3, Its awesome !!!
* Canceled the flat that booked in Bangalore.
* Dobey's a11y-test-suite rpm are available for download here. A sample output of gedit available for 2.16 and for 2.20. You can use this to test any GNOME / Mozilla application.

Linux Desktop Testing Project (LDTP) 0.9.0 released

2007-08-28T02:29:00.000-07:00

Whats new in this release...

* Kartik Mistry fixed build issue in Alpha machines
* Rewrite of LDTP recording framework and now it completely uses pyatspi or orca-atspi (when pyatspi is not installed) - Thanks to Willi Walker of Sun - Supporting LDTP community to use orca's atspi.
* Added new accessibility roles required for Firefox automation
* LDTP documentation has been majorly updated
* Other major bug fixes

Download source tarball / Binary rpm

Thanks to
* Mozilla organization for selecting LDTP for Google Summer of Code 2007
* Sun China team (Emily Chen, Dave Lin, and others) for their support through out SOC'07
* Harishankaran - Student participated in LDTP - Mozilla / Google SoC

Summer of Code 2007 - Firefox automation

2007-08-27T22:43:00.000-07:00

Harishankaran (sp2hari) has done a wonderful job, Firefox automation using LDTP as part of Google Summer of Code 2007 under Mozilla organization.

Few interesting blogs by the student
* Firefox 3.0 amazing experience
* Tinderbox integration (Credit goes to Emily Chen, Dave Lin - Sun China team)
* SOC status
* Screen cast of FF 3.0 automation

A big thanks to Emily Chen, Dave Lin, Michael Shang of Sun China team ! Without their support its going to be a miracle for the student to integrate Firefox automation in Solaris Tinderbox setup.

You can download the FF 3.0 automation scripts from here

SqlBulkCopy implementation available in Mono 1.2.5 preview

2007-07-30T02:25:00.000-07:00

Long waiting SqlBulkCopy implementation is now available part of Mono 1.2.5 preview. Needs more testing though... With this almost 99% of SqlClient implementation is, API compatible with MS.NET.

Nice tutorial by Hari for porting existing LDTP scripts to new format

2007-07-09T02:03:00.000-07:00

Nice tutorial by Hari for porting existing Linux Desktop Testing Project (LDTP) scripts to new format.

People's Choice Award

2007-07-05T08:27:00.000-07:00

We (Me, Srinidhi, Akhil, Michael Schroeder, Marcus Rueckert and Andreas Bauer) have got People's Choice Award, in HackWeek. Final result was published by Nat on Tuesday.

Thanks to all, who have voted for us !!!

Hackweek - Great time at work place

2007-07-01T06:49:00.000-07:00

In Novell we had HackWeek, last week. It was a wonderful time !!! Lots of new learning... It will be nice to have more HackWeek's.

I was working in Test harness for the build service for automated testing along with Srinidhi and Akhil. The good part is, we all work in a different team (me in Mono, Srinidhi in iFolder, Akhil in Evolution) and we joined together for this HackWeek.

Features added as part of HackWeek

Test automation will be run in same enviroment as build environment.
A shell environment for the user, with which user can invoke any scripting language.

Advantages

User can add their testing scripts, written in any scripting language and they can invoke the scripts inside test-harness.sh.
Environment is recreated everytime, when the test-harness is invoked. Thus giving a reliable environment and test results.
Its not restricted to just test one application, you can add how many ever package you want to test, just add all of them in BuildRequires (in future TestRequires) and invoke all the tests !!!

Pre-Requisite to use the test environment

Need to have the test initiater code in test-harness.sh, uploaded to the current project where you want to test the application.
Log files should be generated in XML or HTML format / extension only.
Once the test is done, the result XML and / or HTML file(s) has to be moved to /tmp/RESULT directory, which will be uploaded to repository directory.

Known issues

Test results are uploaded to repository directory.
Tests are done only in RPM based environment.
If test-harness.sh is not available in the current project, still it goes till the invocation of test-harness.sh file.
All required projects for testing should be either linked or should be built in the same project.
Need to give all the packages required for testing in BuildRequires.
Tested in OpenSuSE-10.2 and that too in chroot environment. Need to check them with other distributions and in Xen environment.

Future ideas

Instead of BuildRequires, It will be good, if we have TestRequires field in spec file, with which we can just install packages relate to testing and that too at the time of testing.
Tests should be done for DEB based environment.
Need to find appropriate directory and upload them.
Since we are giving a shell environment through test-harness.sh, we need to restrict the commands !?!
When test results are uploaded, it should not delete the rpm's available in repository.

Acknowledgment

Thanks to Michael Schroeder, darix and bauersman for all their valuable help and suggestion.

NOTE: Before starting this project, we don't have any idea how build system works, no perl / ruby knowledge, which are required knowledge for this project !

Example test-harness.sh script content

##################### Script starts here ###################
echo "gnome-session" > ~/.xinitrc

export DISPLAY=localhost:1
/usr/bin/Xvfb -reset -terminate -once :1 -screen 0 1024x768x24&
pid=`pidof Xvfb`
sleep 5

mkdir -p /tmp/test
tar zxv -C /tmp/test -f gedit.tar.gz

lwd=`pwd`
cd /tmp/test/gedit
ldtprunner gedit-execution.xml
cd $lwd

mkdir -p /tmp/RESULT
cp -a /tmp/test/gedit/gedit-log.xml /tmp/RESULT/

kill -s TERM `echo $pid | cut -d " " -f 1` # Kill Xvfb session at end
##################### Script ends here ###################

Try this patch and send your feedback to anagappan AT novell DOT com, srinidhi AT novell DOT com

Hackweek: Test harness for the build service for automated testing

2007-06-26T00:10:00.000-07:00

Hackweek in Novell (25-29/June/2007).

As part of Hackweek I'm working on Test harness for the build service for automated testing, an idea of JPR ! I'm working with Srinidhi and Akhil. Lot of other ideas are there, you can grab it and start working on it !

I get lots of help from darix, bauersman and srinidhi in #opensuse-buildservice of irc.freenode.net. I thank them personally. I wrote a small HOWTO setup OpenSuSE Build System based on the info I gathered from them.

Remote Procedure Call in Mono

2007-05-30T23:48:00.000-07:00

Mono ADO.NET now supports 'Remote Procedure Call' invocation, which boosts perfomance of accessing the stored procedure in MS-SQL or Sybase database.

Check here - advantages of using RPC.

Good and Sad news

2007-05-15T20:22:00.000-07:00

Good news

* Linux Desktop Testing Project (LDTP) and GNOME Tinderbox integration work of Prashanth Mohan done through GNOME / Google SoC 2006 is now integrated into jhbuild system ! Thanks to Frederic Peters and Federico.
* Firefox automation using Linux Desktop Testing Project has been selected for this Google Summer of Code under Mozilla organization. Harishankar a third year engineering student of NITT, India will be doing the project under the guidance of me and Emily Chen of Sun, China. Thanks to Emily for her continous support.
* LDTP debian packages are now available in Debian package unstable repository, Thanks to Kartik Mistry.
* LDTP Tutorial documentation is available for download, please send your feedback to ldtp-dev@lists.freedesktop.org.

Have few updates about Mono ADO.NET, will blog it later.

Sad news
* My father passed away (almost a month back). It wass very difficult to get the death certificate of my father and legal heir certificate in India, even after bribing :( I received all the government legal documents almost after 25 days. Junk system !!!
* Linux Desktop Testing Project site hosted in freedesktop site is down for a while.

Celebrated Pongal

2007-01-15T22:41:00.000-08:00

Nice time @ home with my parents and my family members ! Celebrated Pongal festival with my family members, though could not attend Mattu Pongal.

Some rangoli pictures made by my wife and my mother in front of my parents house.

Status about ADO.NET porting to Mono

2007-01-10T09:33:00.000-08:00

Most of the time, I'm working on ADO.NET for Mono. Started implementing all possible missing APIs, events, properties.

Before 2 months, missing API's, events, properties of System.Data and System.Data.Common was more than 70 each. Today when I checked its approx 10 and 30 respectively.

Planing to start work on SqlTypes and SqlClient. Hope things will go fine !

Booked a flat in Bangalore

2007-01-10T09:17:00.000-08:00

Hectic time, put all my savings in booking a flat in Electronic City, Bangalore. Thanks to Veerapuram Varadhan and Srinivas Ragavan for helping me to book this flat !

Daadys Builders is the flat promoters. Seems they are doing lot of projects in Bangalore. In India, most of the IT hubs are becoming costlier these days. Number 1 is Bangalore. Hyderabad, Chennai are on the way... Its really going to be difficult for others employeed in other fields (I mean other than IT field).

Salary structure

2007-01-10T09:15:00.000-08:00

Today in our local daily (THE HINDU, Bangalore edition) read an article about salary structure for different jobs and in different countries. Nice to see, how much on an average, IT people are getting paid ;)

Interesting mathematcial / computer programming problems !

2007-01-10T08:43:00.000-08:00

Harinath was discussing about this Project Euler with me last week and by this week, I get a chance to look into this. Thanks to Ankit for giving me the site link.

Interesting problems.

Python customized logging rocks !

2006-12-15T02:48:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Peter Parente for suggesting LDTP community to use Python logging module ! and we have integrated it now ;)

Thanks to Ludovico Magnocavallo for giving an example to customize the logging output ! With the example available there, in LDTP we have customized our logging format ! It really rocks !!!

System.Data of ADO.NET in Mono

2006-12-12T20:57:00.000-08:00

Completed most of the missing API's and MonoTODO's under System.Data/System.Data of ADO.NET module in Mono project.

Should start with System.Data /System.Data.Common.

Thanks to MOMA tool, with which lots of System.Data missing API's are reported, which are of high priority to be fixed. I'm working on them...

Released LDTP 0.7.0 !

2006-12-10T08:44:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Rodney Dawes (valgrinded LDTP, fixed lots of memory leaks, improved execution performance), Peter Parente (Suggested to integrate Python Logging module with LDTP).

LDTP 0.7.0 has been released - Announcement.

Thanks to all the package creaters Harsha (Ubuntu LTS 6.06), Sandeep (FC5), Surendran (FC6, SuSE 10.1). They are available in the download page.

Palm Source contributions to LDTP

2006-10-05T12:32:00.000-07:00

Plam Source is continously supporting and helping LDTP community with their patches (like, enable TCP service in LDTP, to do remote testing of applications) and new ideas like Object Oriented LDTP !

I personally thank all their contributions to LDTP project.

Binary Serialization implementation of ADO.NET in Mono

2006-10-05T12:15:00.000-07:00

More than 3 weeks of work, I finally implemented the Binary Serialization of ADO.NET in Mono ! A new feature of ADO.NET 2.0. Thanks to Harinath and Ankit for reviewing all my code and they have given me the complete review of the code. Now the code looks better than my first patch ! I did my commit last week.

Harinath has given some more suggestions to improve constraints related implementation at the time of De-Serialization. I have the half way working code. Still need to regress them, could not find time as, I was slightly busy with my visa processing !

Suggestions to use LDTP

2006-10-05T06:24:00.000-07:00

An author Galmes Pierre-Andre suggest to use LDTP for "Functional testing for Linux".

I personally thank the author for suggesting LDTP to be used in functional testing !!!

LDTP 0.6.0 released !!!

2006-09-28T23:10:00.000-07:00

Released LDTP 0.6.0 yesterday night our time ! Thanks to Dobey, Palm Source, Prashanth Mohan for their contributions to this release.

Few liner review of LDTP

2006-09-21T04:47:00.000-07:00

Its interesting to see this few liner review of LDTP

Copy of review pasting below:

LDTP is packaged for Mandriva cooker, so installation is easy.

Once installed, a good starting point is the existing scripts that you can checkout with:

cvs -d :pserver:anoncvs@cvs.freedesktop.org:/cvs/ldtp co pyautosuite

To run for instance the gedit test:

cd gedit
ldtprunner run.xml

First impression:

as for dogtail, looks more like a prototype than something useable
keeps separation between scripts and data with XML files

Dobeys great work - Accessibility test suite

2006-09-21T04:39:00.000-07:00

Dobey is currently working on Accessibility test suite project using LDTP. His work will identify accessibility related issues in most GNOME applications !

His great work is now available for download. He needs more contributors for the Accessibility test suite project to improve GNOME accessibility support.

LDTP 0.5.0 released !!!

2006-08-10T23:22:00.000-07:00

wow !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Its a wonderful day ! Prem has announced that LDTP 0.5.0 has been released.

Thanks to Prashanth Mohan for his major contribution as part of Google Summer of Code and his mentors Veerapuram Varadhan and Emily Chen for guiding him with the list of tasks.

GNOME Tinderbox integration - work by Prashanth Mohan - Guided by Frederic Peters / Veerapuram Varadhan. You can download his work from here.
Evolution automation - work by Prashanth Mohan - Guided by Emily Chen. You can download his work from here.

One major update in this release is LDTP Recording. This task was majorly developed by Hari / Theyagarajan / Venkateswaran.

Alex of Palm Source, who has initiated Object Oriented LDTP ! We would like to see this soon in the main steam.

More than 70 different scenarios in gedit has been automated by Srini and Narasim. Soon they all will be available in main CVS. You can download it from here.

Overall credit goes to Varadhan, as he was giving us feedback in all directions and suggesting ideas in all the technical discussions.

LDTP Tinderbox integration !

2006-07-26T01:40:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Frederic and Prashanth for making this !

Completed 31 today !!!

2006-07-17T20:59:00.000-07:00

oooooo !!!!! Today completed 31 years !

My understanding of Mono ADO.NET

2006-07-14T05:58:00.000-07:00

Today I gave a small presentation of Mono ADO.NET to the Mono team in Bangalore ! The presentation become discussion over a period of time :D and it was very informative (atleast to me ;)

LDTP + Tinderbox update !

2006-07-13T22:27:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Prashanth Mohan and Frederic Peters to make this happen !!! LDTP is running in Jhbuild environment on Frederic's tinderbox test server !

First ever patch for Mono

2006-07-13T04:55:00.000-07:00

Submitted my first patch for Mono ADO.NET in Ximian Bugzilla ! Its quite interesting :)

Planet LDTP !!!!!

2006-07-02T23:04:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Prashanth Mohan for setting up Planet LDTP !

SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop - Preview edition

2006-06-28T22:22:00.000-07:00

SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop - Preview edition is now available for download. Go and grab it ! Enjoy the Xgl 3D effects. Great work from Novell !

Open SuSE 10.1 + Linux For You magazine

2006-06-27T21:15:00.000-07:00

If you are in India go and grab OpenSuSE 10.1 DVD along with Linux For You magazine, June 2006 Edition !!!

Tinderbox integration - Status !

2006-06-20T22:12:00.000-07:00

Its nice to see the progress of Tinderbox integration with LDTP / Jhbuild ! I appreciate the work of Prashanth Mohan. I'm happy to see Luis Villa comment on tinderbox integration. Luis Villa has blogged about Tinderbox integration in his blog too. I'm too happy to see that too ;)

Prasanth Mohan is getting good support from Frederic and James for Tinderbox and Jhbuild related queries.

I thank Varadhan and Emily Chen (Google Summer of Code mentors) for guiding Prasanth Mohan.

First ever ADO.NET program ;)

2006-06-20T06:07:00.000-07:00

First ever ADO.NET program written by me ;)

using System;
using System.Data;
using System.Data.Common;
using System.Data.SqlClient;

class firstadocs {
static void Main(string[] args)
{
string ConnectionString ="server=mono-server;database=monotest;user id=monotester;password=monotester;";

SqlConnection conn = new SqlConnection(ConnectionString);
string sql = "SELECT * FROM tbl1";
SqlCommand cmd = new SqlCommand (sql, conn);
conn.Open ();
SqlDataReader reader = null;
reader = cmd.ExecuteReader();
while (reader.Read())
{
Console.Write(reader.GetString(0).ToString() + " ," );
Console.Write(reader.GetString(1).ToString() + " ," );
Console.WriteLine("");
}
// Close reader
reader.Close();
// Close the connection
conn.Close();
}
}

Thanks to senga for helping me in understanding ADO.NET. Also going through the book 'A Programmers Guide to ADO.NET in C#' !

Handwriting recognition tool

2006-06-19T20:46:00.000-07:00

Online Handwriting recognition tool from HP ! available under GPL license !!!

/me learning ADO.NET

2006-06-19T03:41:00.000-07:00

As part of Mono ADO.NET development, I'm learning all the basics of ADO.NET. Also reading some intersing blogs about ADO.NET. MSDN is a good reference to start with, it seems !

Joined Mono ADO.NET team

2006-06-19T03:35:00.000-07:00

As part of my regular office work, I have joined Mono ADO.NET team ! Thanks to all the managers who have made this possible ;)

Casanova progress on LDTP + Tinderbox integration

2006-06-19T03:31:00.000-07:00

Casanova is progressing well in LDTP + Tinderbox integration as part of Google SoC. Hope he should be able to complete the task as per schedule. I wish him 'All the very best !'.

Casanova - Google SoC experience sharing

2006-06-15T03:56:00.000-07:00

Casanova (Prashanth Mohan) sharing his Google Summer of Code experience with the students, profressors of Anna University and Linux Users Group members, Chennai - ilugc.

Team picnic - Novell Bangalore

2006-06-15T03:27:00.000-07:00

I joined with my family members for the team picnic organized by Linux Desktop Group in Novell Bangalore. We all went to Banargatta in Bangalore. Its 20 KM away from the city. The place was really cool ! We all enjoyed a lot :)

Me playing cricket - Trying to take a run ;)

My daughter and Varadhan with deer

Workshop on contributing to FOSS projects

2006-06-15T03:16:00.000-07:00

FOSS event conducted by NRCFOSS and the event happened in MIT Campus, Anna University.

Topics I covered in the workshop 'How to contribute to FOSS projects'

* Picking up a task
* Opening up a discussion in the community
* Preparing a patch
* Getting the patch reviewed
* Giving it to the community

Prasanth Mohan for Google SoC under GNOME org for LDTP project

2006-06-01T03:09:00.000-07:00

Prashanth Mohan has replaced the existing nominee Shankar Ganesh for Google Summer of Code under GNOME organization for LDTP project. The replacement was due to some unavoidable circumstances !

We look forward to work with Prashanth Mohan :) SoC tasks for Prasahanth Mohan.

Mentors remain same - Veerapuram Varadhan, Emily Chen.

Overall Prashanth Mohan (Casanova) task
* Tinderbox integration
* Evolution automation
* LDTP Regression

Shankar Ganesh will be integrating LDTP + Tinderbox

2006-05-24T22:52:00.000-07:00

As part of GNOME organization / Google Summer of Code, Shankar Ganesh will be integrating Tinderbox and LDTP ! We are getting good support from GNOME community for this integration work.

LDTP ARM porting updates

2006-05-24T22:51:00.000-07:00

I'm happy to share the news from Puneet Mishra (QA Lead working for Palm Source) has sent me a mail stating that LDTP has been ported to ARM hardware. So GTK based applications running in ARM hardware can be tested using LDTP !!!!!!!!

Ref: http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/ldtp-dev/2006-May/000326.html

LDTP under GNOME organization for Google Summer of Code

2006-05-22T23:24:00.000-07:00

I'm happy to announce that Shankar Ganesh has been selected for LDTP project under GNOME organization for Google Summer of Code !!!!!!!!! List of selected studnets for Google SoC under GNOME org

I thank Veerapuram Varadhan, Federico, Behdad, Vuntz, Emily Chen (Sun China) for supporting LDTP project !! I regret for those who did not get a chance in Google Summer of Code. I hope they could make it for the next time. I wish good luck to all of the 5 applicants who have applied for LDTP project :)

Prasanth Mohan working on new LDTP editor !

2006-05-21T12:16:00.000-07:00

Prashanth is working on a new LDTP editor based on Scintilla. I think, once this editor is out, LDTP will be boosted up !!! I personally thank Prasanth for his great effort :)

5 applications for LDTP - Google SoC

2006-05-21T12:12:00.000-07:00

For the first time LDTP project (Linux Desktop Testing Project) was nominated for Google Summer of Code under GNOME organization !

I'm happy to share that we have received 5 applications for LDTP !!!!

I will soon share the list of selected candidates once the official list comes from GNOME / Google.

Sun open sourced Handwriting recognition code under GPL !!

2006-05-11T01:47:00.000-07:00

Hand writing recognition software released by Sun under GPL license !! Its great to hear that such softwares are released under GPL license.

Reference: Herzis blog

Shaved my hairs in the head ;) - Been to Tirupathi

2006-05-09T22:02:00.000-07:00

I will soon upload my photo ;) I have been to Tirupathi ! Dovoted my hairs to the God Thirumalai Venkateswara Perumal ! Had a nice darshan, I personally felt that I had achieved something after seeing the god. Its second richest god in the world, next to Rome !!!! I'm proud to say this :)

Trip to Ooty

2006-05-09T21:43:00.000-07:00

I have been to ooty with my family members ! It was a nice journey :) We went to Mudumalai forest, Paikara falls.

A Virtual Audio Loopback Cable

2006-05-09T04:33:00.000-07:00

Interesting link I got to know today when browsing for something else ;) Virtual loopback recorder and real audio convertor !! VSound

GNOME Automation using LDTP in Google Summer of Code

2006-05-05T02:31:00.000-07:00

I'm happy to announce that LDTP project also participates in Google Summer of Code !!! We are participating for the first time ;)

Check GNOME automation using LDTP - Inrested students apply before May 8, 2006.

LDTP 0.4.0 released !!!

2006-03-30T01:37:00.000-08:00

Its one more good day !!!

Happy to announce that LDTP 0.4.0 released !!!

This release includes...
* Refined object search from the appmap table
* Data XML are now transmitted and received with in CDATA
* Reimplemented getwindowlist, getobjectlist, getobjectinfo, getobjectproperty
* Memory leak fixed - Freed memory resources when client disconnects

And now take a deep breath and go through the exhaustive list of bug fixes which makes this version of LDTP the most stable of the lot. A special thanks to Patrick from Sun Microsystems who has actively hacked LDTP and helped us identify and resolve many issues.

LDTP ARM porting

2006-03-26T22:31:00.000-08:00

LDTP will be soon ported to test GUI's in embedded system by Palm Source. I personally thank Palm Source and Puneet Mishra of Palm Source for taking this initiative.

LDTP workshop in SJEC

2006-03-26T22:27:00.000-08:00

I thank Bangalore FSUG for making LDTP workshop a great success in SJEC. I personally thanks Rakesh 'Arky' Ambati of FSUG Bangalore and Saravana Prabhu LDTP Developement team.

LDTP 0.3.0 released !!!

2006-02-14T23:18:00.000-08:00

On first of February 2006, Premkumar announced LDTP 0.3.0 release.

New features include:

+ New Client Server Architecture:
+ Run time appmap generation (initialization of appmap is optional)
+ Regular expression based object search (both context and component)
+ For unexpected pop window handling
+ Programming language is no barrier for automation

Blogging after some long days !!!

2006-02-14T23:12:00.000-08:00

I'm no longer Evolution Bug Master. Now I'm in Novell Zenworks Linux Management team.

Apologize me, Dave Malcom (RedHat). This is regarding my blog post against him.

LDTP talk scheduled in FOSS IN 2005

2005-10-28T08:03:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Atul, who organize FOSS.IN (earlier Linux-Bangalore). I registered for a talk about LDTP in FOSS.IN and it has been approved (talk #9). I need to prepare some slides for the talk soon. Talks will be from November 29, 2005 to December 2, 2005. Interested people in India and even outside India can come and attend the talk ;)

Evolution automation testing movie !!

2005-10-28T07:29:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Shaheed who has created this Evolution IMAP sanity testing movie using LDTP ;) It has been created with a high resolution, few people have suggested to create the movie with a lesser resolution. Let us do that for the next release :)

Thanks to Yusuke Shinyama who has provide the valuable tool vnc2swf :)

Sun's contribution to LDTP project

2005-10-28T04:33:00.000-07:00

Sun Microsystems and Novell QA teams are working together in LDTP project. Sun LDTP hackers are regularly building LDTP packages for Solaris platform (includes both Sparc and i386) and they are available in the default download page. Thanks to Dave and Patrick of Sun !!

LDTP 0.2.1 released with localization testing support !!!

2005-10-27T04:51:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Prem for working with me in completing the localization integration task :) Now using LDTP, we can test the application running in Localized evnironment too. Write the scripts once and test it in different environment.

Thanks to Karunakar of IndLinux, who provides us all the possible information about localization.

Check out the list of new features for LDTP 0.2.1 release.

Evolution mailer test scripts using LDTP

2005-10-26T04:57:00.000-07:00

Patrick from Sun Microsystems and Shaheed from Novell are writing Evolution mailer test scripts using LDTP and those scripts are given to the Evolution community. Prem and Shaheed has created a evolution utils package, which contains the most used functionalities. The script writter just needs to call the respective functions. Also the data part are seperated from scripts :) So the scripts are written just once. For doing regression testing, different types of data's can be populated and the scripts can be called in any sequence.

LDTP Evolution automation demo for Evolution maintainers

2005-10-25T05:06:00.000-07:00

Friday, October 21 2005, Shaheed, Prem, Poornima and me gave Evolution mailer scripts demo to Evolution maintainers - Harish, Shreyas, Sushma, Praveen. It was a good time with them. We have got very good suggestions from the Evolution development team. We will try to implement them as part of Evolution test scripts.

FAQs about LDTP

2005-10-10T05:25:00.000-07:00

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.