Magomatic

It’s been a while since the last time I blogged about Mago, but Natty is going to be an exciting cycle for desktop testing automation (a lot is happening!) and I would like to present some of the work we have been doing.

Today I will write about Magomatic, a new side project related to Mago.

If you have tried to add a new testcases to an existing Mago wrapper, you can see that this is pretty straight forward. Most of the things that you need are already there, and you need to add only the code of the test, without thinking on the accessibility information of the application (OK, sometimes you have to, but it is quite simple to start the process). If you, however, have ever tried to add a new wrapper application to Mago I guess that you have found the process a bit difficult: you need to understand how the accessibility information is presented by LDTP, you need to create the application python file, you also will have to create a test suite python file, and a XML data file. This is time consuming and I though it could (and should) be automated.

So I created Magomatic. And how does it work?

Magomatic uses templates and accessibility information to create those files for you. Using it is pretty straight forward:

1. Open the application you want to create the wrapper for.
2. Run Magomatic:

   $ bzr branch lp:magomatic
   $ cd magomatic/bin
   $ ./magomatic

3. When prompted, you will need to select the window you want to create the wrapper for with the mouse pointer.
4. Done! Under the

   data/

   folder you will find a folder with the name of the application with the needed files to add to Mago and start coding your tests.

This is a work in progress, but the main and most important functionality is already there. We really hope that this will lower the entry barrier to Mago and more people will join us adding new tests in the Natty cycle.