Headless testing using AIR test runner and Xvfb under Linux

[Brett Adam]

We've been using dpUInt recently as part of our testing strategy for
some new Flex apps. So far, so good.

However, one key piece of our build infrastructure has been
*automated* build and test. We happen to use a Linux based environment
with bamboo as our build driver and a gang of distributed, headless
build servers doing the heavy lifting. Needless to say, figuring out
how to get dpUInt tests working in a headless context was key.

After some mucking about, one of our team (Matthew Wilson) came up
with an elegant solution that uses the Xvfb virtual framebuffer as a
head. The AIR test runner thinks it has a head to run when the truth
is, it doesn't.

Here's the wrapper script we use to invoke the test runner with Xvfb
configured. We invoke this from a simple ant build wrapper. Hopefully,
others will find it useful.

---

ant task

(where property app-build.test.Xvnc-wrapper.cmd=${app-build.dir}/Xvfb-
wrapper.sh )

<target name="auto-test" description="Run automated tests">
<antcall target="test-clean"/>
<!-- The output file has to be an absolute path for air, so
create a property using location which resolves it for us -->
<property name="outputFile" location="${app-
build.test.output.dir}/junit.xml"/>
<exec executable="${app-build.test.Xvfb-wrapper.cmd}">
<arg line="${air.sdk.bin.dir}/${air.sdk.runner} ${app-
build.test.dir}/TestRunner-app.xml -- -headless -reportFile $
{outputFile}"/>
</exec>
</target>


---

Xvfb wrapper


#!/bin/sh
#
# Author: Matthew Wilson, rPath, Inc.
#
# This could probably be done more elegantly in Python...

pid=''
for ((d=0; d < 20; d++)); do
DISPLAY=:$d
Xvfb -ac $DISPLAY > /dev/null 2>&1 &
sleep 2
jobs -l %1 > /dev/null
pid=$(jobs -l %1 2>&1 | grep Running | awk '{print $2}')
if [ -z "$pid" ]; then
continue
fi
if ps $pid > /dev/null 2>&1; then
break
fi
done

if [ -z "$pid" ]; then
echo "unable to start Xvfb"
exit 1
fi

trap "kill -9 $pid" SIGINT SIGTERM EXIT

export DISPLAY=$DISPLAY

$*

[Michael Labriola]

That is excellent.

 

I am going to add this as a page on the dpUInt and Fluint sites.

 

Thanks so much,

Mike