Wait, what?

Let's say you're a poor creature who needs to work with .bat files, in a jungle of custom scripts written by someone else.

Let's say one of the subscripts that should wait for something else doesn't work anymore for whatever reason.

Let's say it's late so you decide to go for a (close your eyes) hardcoded wait in a .bat file.

Well on Windows 7 and 2012 Server, you can just type:

timeout /t <seconds> /nobreak

You won't feel proud, but it might do the trick.

How to transform a dusty PC into a nice Continuous Feedback tool

• Install Debian/Ubuntu/any Linux distro on your old PC
• Install Iceweasel/Firefox 
• Display on several tabs the Jenkins Radiator views
• Install the addon of the day: Tab Slideshow!

Processing Jenkins json results with Python

You know, those days when a new feature is introduced and the next day your Jenkins dashboard is yellow as the sun?

Well sometimes, it happens and those days I sometimes want to get a plain list of issues, in order to group the tests per type of failures.

If you're lazy like me, you don't wanna click on every failing test to see the error details and possible claims.

So there comes the script: https://github.com/frica/plain-failed

It's very rough but does the job for me!

Tips: standalone HTML file with pandoc

If like me you want to avoid as much as possible using MS Word, you've probably heard about Pandoc. This tool allows to convert from various text formats (text, rst, Markdown...) to HTML, epub or pdf for instance.

One common option is to generate a HTML file with a css, to have a better rendering.

pandoc -s -S -c pandoc.css myfile.rst -o output.html

OK but then let's say you want to send the file output.html to someone by mail, how do you do? You would need to send the html and the css file, and that would be weird for fast and/or internal communication for instance.

Well there is an option to include the css automatically in the generated html: the -H option.

pandoc -s -S -H pandoc.css myfile.rst -o output.html

 Just make sure your css file starts and ends with the <style> tag:

<style type="text/css">
 ...
</style>

Source

Mandatory post: testing tools

Following a post I read earlier today, I feel like I need to share with the testing community a list of tools I use in my everyday job as a tester. So let's start this very original post.

Screenshot

As a tester you often need to take screenshot of a screen, a window or a part of a window. The default printcsreen command is too limited for that so you need an efficient tool to perform that task. There are many screenshot tools on the Internet. Among the free ones for Windows, I'd recommend Greenshot. It's light, it starts when your computer boots up, and it saves as different file formats including PNG, which is my preferred format. On Linux I use Shutter.

Text editor

Everything except Notepad. Seriously. There are plenty of programs handling better text files than this one. Install Notepad++ or SublimeText (this one runs also on Linux) and discover a world where you can load big log files, look for occurrences of an exception etc.

Terminal

Whoever has used bash on Linux knows the power of the command-line interface. Even if you're not a script guru, you'll need one to use it. So get one better than the cmd.exe. I tried Console, ConEmu and several others but I ended up installing cygwin to get a Limux-like bash terminal. OK it's a bit of an overhead to install all the tools for the console, but you can later improve your skills with that terminal and actually re-use later that console if you would ever switch to Linux.

Mind-map tool

I sometimes use it to organize my thoughts on large issues. I use Xmind but Freemind is OK.

Development environment

Even as a tester, you will one day need it. Since I work mostly on Java applications, I like Eclipse a lot but every programmer you meet will tell you there is a better one (Netbeans, IntelliJ etc.)

File Explorer

If you have never tasted what a tabbed explorer is, you should have a look and install Clover. Easier navigation into the filesystem guaranteed!

Internet Browser

Use Firefox or Chrome. For their dev tools, the conformance to HTML5 and their plugins. 
Use IE if you're willing to help a poor company who lost the Web Or if your product manager had the strange idea to support it in your web apps.

 Test management tool

Yes you need one. Your company has none? Then you have the responsability to find a reliable way to store the test scripts, their execution and the link to the requirements. I used Word and Excel in the past, but now I have the luxury to be able the well-known HP Quality Center. Not free, of course. In fact I don't know any good free polished test management tool. Many commercial alternatives to HP QC exist, but I never had the chance to play with them (yes you, TestRail...).

Remote connection tool

Some people say it's not needed but I've always thought that a tool keeping a list of test machines names and remote access passwords was handy. They are several free ones, none of them convinced me. I ended up using RemoteDesktopManager. 

Of course I use several other tools to test applications but they are domain-specific (healthcare in my case) and it would deserve another post. And you, what tool do you use to make your software tester's life easier?