Website: User's Manual being converted to online version

Good news! Manon started working on the online documentation. This will avoid including a large PDF (more than 100 pages and a few MBytes) in the distribution package. But more importantly, this will allow keeping the documentation maintained/updated much easily and often!
The complete User's Manual should be available in 3 weeks.

Release of XStudio 1.3b2

Beta 2 of XStudio 1.3 has been released today !

Release of XStudio 1.3b1

Beta 1 of XStudio 1.3 has been released today !

XStudio 1.3: New test dependencies graph

In XStudio 1.3, a new test dependencies graph will be released. This is using a new hierarchical layout much clearer than the former circular layout:


When some cycles do exist they are indicated in red/orange so that you can fix them. And again the new layout does a tremendous job:

XStudio 1.3: New manual launcher

One comment that many people made about the 2 manual launchers already available was: "It's nice but how can I execute some tests, then stop, close XStudio and continue the same session the day after?".
Another question was: "what if I want to run again one individual test already executed a long time ago in a campaign session?".

In XStudio 1.3, we would like to introduce a new manual launcher and a new feature to answer these 2 questions.

1) A third manual launcher
This launcher will be aimed at giving the more flexibility as possible to the operator so that:

• he can execute the tests in the order he wants
• he can re-run the same tests several times
• it's trivial and fast to run the tests
  

The goal being: "as simple as executing an Excel/Word test plan writing down the result manually with a pen"

2 options:

Option1:
Here is a mock-up of what could be the design of the new launcher:

This solution is pretty elegant and provides a good overview of the current status to the test operator but it's not exactly as simple as running test cases "on paper": The test operator has to:

• select a test in the test tree (A)
• select a test case in the sub tree (B)
• description of the test and test case are updated
• click on Succeeded or Failed buttons
• use the Previous test case and Next test case buttons
• optionally submit a bug or link to an already existing bug, post a comment on the fly

At any time the test operator can select a specific test (A) and test case (B) to execute it (even if already executed). The clock and progress bar are still triggered only if the test has the timeout attribute (no change from the current launchers).

Option2:
The launcher would just display tests and test cases in a table.
Columns would be:

• Id
• Path
• Name
• Priority
• Result
• Comment

The Result column of test case rows would contain a combo-box to manually select the results. This is much simpler but the test operator would have to rely on a printed copy of the test plan. All the results would be updated when the test operator clicks on the Submit button.

Option3:
Maybe something in the middle?

I'm interested in your views about it...



2) An option to re-execute stopped campaign session.
This is a delicate point as cheating must be avoided. Indeed, who never got to the following situation:
A tester runs a very time consuming test campaign (several days) on a product, getting all tests succeeding... except one. Really unfortunate isn't it? Hopefully the day after the tester receives a new version of the SUT and (because he's running out of time) re-runs only the failed test overwriting a failure with a success (hence ignoring all potential risk of regression included in the new version o the SUT) :( It is very common unfortunately and should be authorized only in very specific cases.

So, a new right will be introduced so that the users who are granted with this right are the only ones having the ability to re-run a stopped campaign session.

In a next version, the ability the select a specific version of the test to run will be added. This will be part of the flagging system.