Automated Test Hell to Test Heaven

Automated Test Hell
Wojciech Seliga
wojciech.seliga@spartez.com, @wseliga
or There and Back Again

About me
• Coding since 6yo

• Former C++ developer (’90s, early ’00s)

• Agile Practices (inc.TDD) since 2003

• Dev Nerd,Tech Leader, Agile Coach,
Speaker, PHB

• 6.5 years with Atlassian (JIRA Dev Manager)

• Spartez Co-founder & CEO

XP Promise
CostofChange
Time
Waterfall
XP

Almost 10 years
of accumulating
garbage automatic tests

18 000 tests* on all levels
13 000 unit tests
*excluding tests of the libraries
4 000 func and integration tests
1 000 Selenium tests

Our
Continuous Integration
environment

Test frameworks
• JUnit 3 and 4
• JMock, Easymock, Mockito
• Powermock, Hamcrest
• QUnit, HTMLUnit, Jasmine.js, Sinon.js
• JWebUnit, Selenium, WebDriver
• Custom runners

Bamboo Setup
• Dedicated server with 70+ remote
agents (including Amazon Elastic)
• Build engineers
• Bamboo devs on-site

Run in parallel
in batches
Run ﬁrst

Type of tests
• Unit
• Functional
• Integration
• Platform
• Performance

Platforms
• Dimension - DB: MySQL, PostgreSQL, MS
SQL, Oracle
• Dimension - OS: Linux, Windows
• Dimension - Java ver.: 1.5, 1.6, 1.7, 1.8
• Dimension - CPU arch.: 32-bit, 64-bit
• Dimension - Deployment Mode:
Standalone, Tomcat, Websphere, Weblogic
Run Nightly
Coming

Triggering Builds
• On Commit (hooks, polling)
• Dependent Builds
• Nightly Builds
• Manual Builds

Very slow (long hours)
and fragile feedback loop

Serious performance and
reliability issues

You commit at 3 PM
You get “Unit Test Green” email at 4PM
You get ﬂood of “Red Test X” emails at 4 - 9PM
Your colleagues on the
other side of the globe
You happily go home
You

“We probably spend more
time dealing with the JIRA
test codebase than the
production codebase”

Dispirited devs
accepting RED as a norm

Catching up with UI
changes
Page Objects Pattern
Problem:
Solution:

Page Objects Pattern
• Page Objects model UI elements (pages,
components, dialogs, areas) your tests
interact with
• Page Objects shield tests from changing
internal structure of the page
• Page Objects generally do not make
assertions about data. The can assert
the state.
• Designed for chaining

Page Objects Example
public class AddUserPage extends AbstractJiraPage!
{!
!
private static final String URI = !
"/secure/admin/user/AddUser!default.jspa";!
!
@ElementBy(name = "username")!
private PageElement username;!
!
@ElementBy(name = "password")!
private PageElement password;!
!
@ElementBy(name = "confirm")!
private PageElement passwordConfirmation;!
!
@ElementBy(name = "fullname")!
private PageElement fullName;!
!
@ElementBy(name = "email")!
private PageElement email;!
!
@ElementBy(name = "sendemail")!
private PageElement sendEmail;!
!
@ElementBy(id = "user-create-submit")!
private PageElement submit;!
!
@ElementBy (id = "user-create-cancel")!
private PageElement cancelButton;!
!
@Override!
public String getUrl()!
{!
return URI;!
}!
...
@Override!
public TimedCondition isAt()!
{!
return and(username.timed().isPresent(), !
password.timed().isPresent(), fullName.timed().isPresent());!
}!
!
public AddUserPage addUser(final String username, !
final String password, final String fullName, final String
email, final boolean receiveEmail)!
{!
this.username.type(username);!
this.password.type(password);!
this.passwordConfirmation.type(password);!
this.fullName.type(fullName);!
this.email.type(email);!
if(receiveEmail) {!
this.sendEmail.select();!
}!
return this;!
}!
!
public ViewUserPage createUser()!
{!
return createUser(ViewUserPage.class);!
}!
!
!
public <T extends Page> T createUser(Class<T> nextPage,
Object...args)!
{!
submit.click();!
return pageBinder.bind(nextPage, args);!
}!

Using Page Objects
@Test!
public void testServerError()!
{!
jira.gotoLoginPage().loginAsSysAdmin(AddUserPage.class)!
.addUser("username", "mypassword", "My Name",!
"sample@email.com", false)!
.createUser();!
// assertions here!
}!

Opaque Test Fixtures
REST-based Set-up
Problem:
Solution:

REST-based Setup
@Before!
public void setUpTest() {!
restore("some-big-xml-file-with-everything-needed-inside.xml");!
}!
@Before!
public void setUpTest() {!
restClient.restoreEmptyInstance();!
restClient.createProject(/* project params */);!
restClient.createUser(/* user params */);!
restClient.createUser(/* user params */);!
restClient.createSomethingElse(/* ... */);!
}!
VS

Flakey Tests
Timed Conditions
Problem:
Solution:
Mock Unreliable Deps
Test-friendly Markup

Flakey Tests
Quarantine
Problem:
Solution:
Fix Eradicate

Quarantine
• @Ignore
• @Category
• Quarantine on CI server
• Recover or Die

Non-deterministic tests are
strong inhibitor of change
instead of the catalyst

Execution Time:
Test Level
Unit Tests
REST API Tests
JWebUnit/HTMLUnit Tests
Selenium/WebDriver Tests
Speed Conﬁdence

Our example:
Front-end-heavy web app
100 WebDriver tests:
100 QUnit tests:
15 minutes
1.2 seconds

Test Pyramid
Unit Tests (including JS tests)
REST / HTML Tests
Selenium
Good!

Test Code is Not
Trash
Design
Maintain
Refactor
Share
Review
Prune
Respect
Discuss
Restructure

Optimum Balance
Isolation Speed Coverage Level Access Effort

Dangerous to temper with
MaintainabilityQuality / Determinism

People - Motivation
Making GREEN the norm

Build Tiers and Policy
Tier A1 - green soon after all commits
Tier A2 - green at the end of the day
Tier A3 - green at the end of the iteration
unit tests and functional* tests
WebDriver and bundled plugins tests
supported platforms tests, compatibility tests

Wallboards:
Constant
Awareness

Training
• assertThat over assertTrue/False and
assertEquals

• avoiding races - Atlassian Selenium with its
TimedElement

• Favouring unit tests over functional tests

• Promoting Page Objects

• Brownbags, blog posts, code reviews

Automatic Flakiness Detection
Quarantine
Re-run failed tests and see if they pass

Selenium ditching
Sky did not fall in

Ditching - beneﬁts
• Freed build agents - better system throughput

• Boosted morale

• Gazillion of developer hours saved

• Money saved on infrastructure

Ditching - due diligence
• conducting the audit - analysis of the
coverage we lost

• determining which tests needs to rewritten
(e.g. security related)

• rewriting the tests (good job for new hires
+ a senior mentor)

Flaky Browser-based Tests
Races between test code and asynchronous page logic
Playing with "loading" CSS class does not really help

Races Removal with Tracing
// in the browser:!
function mySearchClickHandler() {!
    doSomeXhr().always(function() {!
        // This executes when the XHR has completed (either success or failure)!
        JIRA.trace("search.completed");"
    });!
}!
// In production code JIRA.trace is a no-op
// in my page object:!
@Inject!
TraceContext traceContext;!
!
public SearchResults doASearch() {!
    Tracer snapshot = traceContext.checkpoint();!
    getSearchButton().click(); // causes mySearchClickHandler to be invoked!
    // This waits until the "search.completed" 
// event has been emitted, *after* previous snapshot    !
    traceContext.waitFor(snapshot, "search.completed"); !
    return pageBinder.bind(SearchResults.class);!
}!

Can we halve our build times?
Speed

Parallel Execution - Theory
End of Build
Batches
Start of Build

Parallel Execution
End of Build
Batches
Start of Build

Parallel Execution -
Reality Bites
End of Build
Batches
Start of Build
Agent
availability

Dynamic Test Execution
Dispatch - Hallelujah

"You can't manage what
you can't measure."
not by W. Edwards Deming
If you believe just in it

you are doomed.

You can't improve something
if you can't measure it
Proﬁler, Build statistics, Logs, statsd → Graphite

Anatomy of Build*
Compilation
Packaging
Executing Tests
Fetching Dependencies
*Any resemblance to maven build is entirely accidental
SCM Update
Agent Availability/Setup
Publishing Results

JIRA Unit Tests Build
Compilation (7min)
Packaging (0min)
Executing Tests (7min)
Fetching Dependencies (1.5min)
SCM Update (2min)
Agent Availability/Setup (mean 10min)
Publishing Results (1min)

Decreasing Test
Execution Time to
ZERRO
alone would not let us
achieve our goal!

Agent Availability/Setup
• starved builds due to
busy agents building
very long builds

• time synchronization
issue - NTPD problem

• Proximity of SCM repo

• shallow git clones are not so fast and lightweight +
generating extra git server CPU load

• git clone per agent/plan + git pull + git clone per build
(hard links!)

• Stash was thankful (queue)
SCM Update - Checkout time
2 min → 5 seconds

• Fix Predator

• Sandboxing/isolation agent trade-off: 
rm -rf $HOME/.m2/repository/com/atlassian/* 
into 
find $HOME/.m2/repository/com/atlassian/  
-name “*SNAPSHOT*” | xargs rm

• Network hardware failure found
(dropping packets)
Fetching Dependencies
1.5 min → 10 seconds

Compilation
• Restructuring multi-pom maven project
and dependencies

• Maven 3 parallel compilation FTW 
 
-T 1.5C 
*optimal factor thanks to scientiﬁc trial and error research 
7 min → 1 min

Unit Test Execution
• Splitting unit tests into 2 buckets: good and
legacy (much longer)

• Maven 3 parallel test execution (-T 1.5C)
7 min → 5 min
3000 poor tests

(5min)
11000 good tests

(1.5min)

Functional Tests
• Selenium 1 removal did help

• Faster reset/restore (avoid unnecessary
stuff, intercepting SQL operations for debug
purposes - building stacktraces is costly)

• Restoring via Backdoor REST API

• Using REST API for common setup/
teardown operations

Publishing Results
• Server log allocation per test → using now
Backdoor REST API (was Selenium)

• Bamboo DB performance degradation for
rich build history - to be addressed
1 min → 40 s

Unexpected Problem
• Stability Issues with our CI server

• The bottleneck changed from I/O to CPU

• Too many agents per physical machine

JIRA Unit Tests Build Improved
Compilation (1min)
Packaging (0min)
Executing Tests (5min)
Fetching Dependencies (10sec)
SCM Update (5sec)
Agent Availability/Setup (3min)*
Publishing Results (40sec)

Improvements Summary
Tests Before After Improvement %
Unit tests 29 min 17 min 41%
Functional tests 56 min 34 min 39%
WebDriver tests 39 min 21 min 46%
Overall 124 min 72 min 42%
* Additional ca. 5% improvement expected once new git clone
strategy is consistently rolled-out everywhere

Better speed increases

responsibility
Fewer commits (authors) per single build
vs.

But that's still bad
We want CI feedback loop in a few minutes maximum

Inevitable Split - Fears
• Organizational concerns - understanding,
managing, integrating, releasing

• Mindset change - if something worked for
10+ years why to change it?

• Trust - does this library still work?

• We damned ourselves with big buckets for
all tests - where do they belong to?

Splitting code base
• Step 0 - JIRA Importers Plugin (3.5 years ago)

• Step 1- New IssueView and Navigator

• Step 2 - now everything else follows JIRA 6.0

We are still escaping hell.
Hell sucks in your soul.

Conclusions
• Visibility and problem awareness help

• Maintaing huge testbed is difﬁcult and costly

• Measure the problem - to baseline

• No prejudice - no sacred cows

• Automated tests are not one-off investment,
it's a continuous journey

• Performance is a damn important feature

Test performance

is a damn important
feature!

XP vs Sad Reality
CostofChange
Time
Waterfall
XP - ideal
Sad Reality

Interested in such stuff?
http://www.spartez.com/careers
We are hiring in Gdańsk

• Turtle - by Jonathan Zander, CC-BY-SA-3.0

• Loading - by MatthewJ13, CC-SA-3.0

• Magic Potion - by Koolmann1, CC-BY-SA-2.0

• Merlin Tool - by By L. Mahin, CC-BY-SA-3.0

• Choose Pills - by *rockysprings, CC-BY-SA-3.0

• Flashing Red Light - by Chris Phan, CC BY 2.0

• Frustration - http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/striatic

• Broken window - http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/leeadlaf/
Images - Credits

Automated Test Hell to Test Heaven

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