Best way to support testing of multiple app versions

Experiences, small talk, and other automation gossip.
caleb
Posts: 24
Joined: Mon Jul 08, 2013 3:35 am

Best way to support testing of multiple app versions

Post by caleb » Wed Jul 02, 2014 10:30 pm

Hello

Our automation team is currently trying to figure out how best to support multiple versions of the same application we have automated.

For example
App version 1.1 has been automated and released
App version 1.2 is being developed with new features and changes in behaviour to old features, will soon be released.
App version 1.3 is beginning development

All versions of the app need to be supported and tested by our automation.

It is pretty clumsy to add case statements throughout code to change behaviour of the test depending on the version of the app being tested which is what we have currently. Other options we are considering is branching our code in Mercurial at strategic points and maintaining multiple branches or duplicating our code and having different projects in the ranorex solution to support the different app versions.

There are pro's and cons of all the approaches but I'm interested to hear from anyone who has faced this problem and how you chose to work around it.

Cheers

Caleb

Finn
Posts: 3
Joined: Tue Jul 29, 2014 4:26 pm

Re: Best way to support testing of multiple app versions

Post by Finn » Wed Jul 30, 2014 3:03 pm

Hey Caleb,
I guess branching is the best way to deal with your situation.
We have the same Problem, because we have a lot(seriously a lot!) of different Versions of our AUT.

I have to confess it's kind of tricky to merge new tests into all branches, without overwriting branched features...

Best regards,
Finn

caleb
Posts: 24
Joined: Mon Jul 08, 2013 3:35 am

Re: Best way to support testing of multiple app versions

Post by caleb » Wed Jul 30, 2014 9:29 pm

Thanks Finn,

I'm interested to know why you think branching is the best option?

Cheers

Caleb