swWxGuiTesting is a framework allowing unit testing of wxWidgets based GUIs and whole applications; it's core motivation is to some extent based on ideas of TestFirstUserInterface's mailing list, thus, the resulting framework likely to allow TDD of wxWidgets based GUI code.
It's currently remaining proprietary (non-standard wxWidgets) dependency is the included swFrameworkDependent target:
- swFrameworkDependent is the attempt to reduce dependencies from swWxGuiTesting to the SimplewareFramework. Without these dependencies swWxGuiTesting would not be able to work, as it (a) provides some additional structure that a future application under test must implement, and (b) provides means of accessing otherwise not available, but vital information.
Please see separate building notes document, whereas (external) usage from outside the testing framework is demonstrated by the "UsingSwWxGuiTesting" project.
Using CMake custom command's ability the wxrc executable tool is used to produce the capture panel in the shape of an easily includable C++ file with embedded resources, based on the original XRC file. This facilitates the usage of capturing in other targets easier as it prevents the need of specifying or carrying around the concrete directory name containing the capture panel XRC resource.
Unfortunately, MSVC++ and wxrc.exe do not follow the same return code conventions. Thus, when building it the first time the C++ file is correctly produced, but MSVC++ thinks it has failed due to the return code. Only in a second run the building succeeds.
Reinhold's MPhil thesis chapter is the main source of information about this project in particular with respect to the underlying theory and concepts: see
http://reinholdfuereder.portland.co.uk/swWxGuiTesting.pdf
Much more than a proof of concept is Simpleware's application ScanCAD -- the main goal of Reinhold's MPhil study -- which is already using and applying swWxGuiTesting.
Besides aspects mentioned in the aforementioned thesis chapter (most importantly detecting and dealing with test case failures), the most likely case for enhancements of the testing framework concerns the event simulation helper class (swWxGuiTestEventSimulationHelper) and the closely linked Capturing & Replay (C&R) classes.
The helper class (a) frees the developer from the need to know the individual control specific event simulation variations, and (b) hides the actual implementation in the optimistic case of corrections in future wxWidgets versions with respect to simulating events.
For the sake of comprehension each event simulation type adding should be followed by adding the corresponding C&R support. This consists of (1) a new event capturing class (e.g. swCRSpinCtrlUpdateEvent), (2) taking this new event capturing class in the C&R event factory into account (swCREventFactory::CreateEvent() method), and (3) deleting the event type from the check for unsupported events leading to a comment in the "capture script" (swCREventCaptureManager::FilterEvent() method).
In order to early detect any changes in the event generation by upgrading wxWidgets version, each event simulation helper method must have a corresponding GUI test case in the CppGuiTestWxGuiTesting project. That is:
- a test case in swWxGuiTestEventSimulationHelperTest class
- using or simulating an event in swWxGuiTestEvtSimHlpFrame class
VtkWxGuiTesting allows capture & replay of VTK render window interactions, but has admittedly obvious limitations concerning the generation of maintenable test cases.
1.5.5