sorry state of testing with meteor

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David Collier

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Oct 19, 2014, 4:48:07 PM10/19/14
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what are people using to test their apps / packages?

whereas tinytest seemed like a typical MDG pragmatic approach to getting the job done, the velocity project seems to have got carried away on testing for its own sake - and more aimed at test framework authors .
it's also confusing as there are numerous options within velocity that all seem to do the same thing. arunoda provided laika, which i'm guessing was awesome given his track record, but i see no mention on that on the velocity page now.

in chatting with others who are developing meteor apps, where speed and lots of changes are the style, no-one seems to be writing tests. which is OK, until everything breaks.

what are good pragmatic approaches to productive tests with meteor? if velocity is the meta framework, then within that which actual method for writing tests? mocha / laika(?) / other?

tx

David Burles

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Oct 19, 2014, 11:59:44 PM10/19/14
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The thing I like about Tinytest is that I don't have to think about what test framework I am going to use. I can just start writing tests.

Paul Cuciureanu

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Oct 20, 2014, 12:59:18 AM10/20/14
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The topic seems cryptic enough that a few of the velocity authors are writing books to un-murk the issue, none is free, but some outdated documentation is available in the many git repos.

My hypothesis is that the authors want to ride the meteor 1.0 release wave, which is why they've all gotten back to writing given the little time that's left.

You can purchase the books to nudge them to hurry up, that's what I did.

I think the best documented testing project will win long term - that might mean giving out one of these testing books for free, as quality documentation.





Paul Cuciureanu

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Arunoda Susiripala

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Oct 20, 2014, 1:17:06 AM10/20/14
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Hi,

I'm not writing a book on testing and it's a different one.

I believe in good documentation and articles for any project. 
Velocity will have good set of docs once it get released.
Don't expect them from the authors but someone will do it.

I don't think velocity has any plans for Meteor 1.0, but I'm not sure exactly.

I didn't touch Laika since Velocity. I've much more important(and interesting) projects to work on :) 
So, I didn't try to add it to Velocity and hope mocha-web does something similar.

Books

Sam and Josh are working on books on testing and I think it's a good thing. Since someone can jump start with testing very easily. And that's a good way to ask something from the community for the contributions they made.

Tinytest

Tinytest is for packages and I used to hate it back then. But I got used to it and now it's okay.
So, keep calm and velocity will be great. Give them sometime.

Sam Hatoum

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Oct 20, 2014, 9:47:22 AM10/20/14
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I am on the core team of Velocity and I'm also writing The Meteor Testing Manual. 

STATE OF VELOCITY
Sorry for the frustrations! I'll admit we've not been great at being public with what's happening. I'll take this chance to let you know that the state of Velocity right now is getting close to RC1. 

We're have been busy ironing out issues of:
  • The new packaging system had an impact that we have just about finished fixing
  • Trying to figure out exactly what we need from the MDG and working with them to get the changes in (--debugOnly flag)
  • The mirroring approach has a lot of moving parts and is proving a little tricky (the current RC1 blocker)
  • Trying to find time! The core team and framework writers are all doing this for free and all have other jobs / commitments.
As for Velocity itself, it is purely aimed at test framework authors. It's the test runner that allows other frameworks to emerge, like the recent pleasant surprise of meteor-casperjs, which now allows people to run UI tests. 

AVAILABLE FRAMEWORKS
To answer your question, There is currently a blocker which I'm working on as we speak and I should have that done today/tomorrow. Once that's fixed, you'll should be able to use these in a stable fashion:


For UI testing, you can use these today with the NO_MIRROR flag
selenium-nightwatch (semi-integrated, can be used without Velocity also)

You can also use TinyTest in the knowledge that there's a Velocity compatible version is coming very soon and the tests will be portable.

Laika support is not on the cards as we know it's no longer supported. Someone has more important things these days :p

HELP!
We can do with some coding help. If anyone has time, has good working knowledge of Meteor and is willing to help, we have a good long-term solution to mirroring in sight and the only thing stopping us from doing it is time.

MY PLAN AS AN AUTHOR
I'll be giving away the chapter on Velocity from my book as soon as I've written the next chapter, and I'll also be giving away more chapters as I get further.

Your patience is appreciated and I hope we can please when we get to a releasable version.



Ben Green

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Oct 21, 2014, 3:29:33 AM10/21/14
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If you'd like to use TInytest in your app, check out my new package: tinytest-in-app

Sam Hatoum

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Oct 21, 2014, 4:19:16 AM10/21/14
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Thank you for sharing. This is an excellent option and covers a testing use-case for people who like TinyTest and want to use it across their app.

I think there's a low-friction integration option with Velocity as we're about to only start a mirror if a framework requests it. If there is interest, I'd be happy to work with you and give you an update if where things are and where they're headed.

--

Ben Green

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Oct 22, 2014, 1:20:57 AM10/22/14
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Ok, I've studied the Velocity core and the Mocha package and prepared a package to run Tinytest in Velocity:

Seems to work fine, I wasn't exactly sure how to handle the client/server difference but I think it's alright. Please review my code and let me know if anything should change. I looked at the link you had posted that used SpaceJam to integrate Tinytest but due to my past experience with my tinytest-in-app package, it was much simpler to use the same test runner.

da...@nodeguy.com

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Dec 10, 2014, 1:42:42 PM12/10/14
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BTW I'm compiling a list of the various testing tools here:


David

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