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Darth Sanderson

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Aug 5, 2024, 7:39:22 AM8/5/24

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LUSASis the trading name of Finite Element Analysis Ltd., a UK-based specialist engineering analysis software developer that develops a range of software products, based on the LUSAS finite element system. The software is used for all types of linear and nonlinear stress, dynamic, and thermal / field analysis problems in all branches of the engineering industry. For more information, please visit www.lusas.com.

Being in a safety critical industry, LUSAS have very strict QA procedures. The LUSAS Modeller QA suite consists of nearly 900 test-cases, produces over 11000 output files and takes up over 1.5GB of disk space. A management program was written some years ago to run the tests, compare the output, and prepare a report. On a typical development PC, the complete job (running the tests and comparing the output) would typically take around 10 hours.

A project was conceived to modify our existing QA management program. The program now creates an Incredibuild Submission Interface script file, detailing all the tasks to be undertaken. Each task consists of running a tiny newly created executable with the name of a single test-case. Each instance of the executable is responsible for running one test-case, and comparing the output against that expected. At the end, the management program gathers all the success/failure information and prepares the same report as before.

As described, this was a fairly simple operation. We were able to restructure our management program and get the whole thing going in just a few days. The difficulties that we subsequently encountered were all based around those parts of our program that assumed there was some sort of Windows user interface currently running. Of course, when running on a remote machine, any and all window creation must be completely suppressed.

Being able to quickly and confidently release software is obviously vital. We now find that it is quite possible for up to three developers to update, build, QA, and commit in one day without cutting any corners.