Installing Eclipse on Linux Mint (Ubuntu)

Even thought Eclipse is available in the standard Ubuntu repos, it is not as easy or straightforward to install as other packages. Here is what I did to install the latest Eclipse + Pydev + Subclipse on my Mint 5 (Ubuntu 8.04 equivalent).

Step 1: Install and update Eclipse

1. sudo apt-get install eclipse-pydev, or you can just install the package eclipse-pydev from Synaptic. Pydev has Eclipse (and a bunch of other stuff) as a dependency, so you will get both. Subclipse is not available in the repos; no idea why; we will handle that separately below.
2. Eclipse has it’s own package manager, which is not exactly compatible (in form or function) with APT (note that Synaptic is just a graphical front end for APT). Once the install completes lock the eclipse and eclipse-pydev packages: in Synaptic select the package and then select Package > Lock Version. This will ensure that Synaptic knows it is installed (in case it is a dependency for something else), but it should never mess with trying to update it.
   
3. Start up Eclipse as a normal user, and enter your default working directory. This step will ensure that all the work files that Eclipse needs will be created, and they will be created with the correct permissions and in correct places.
4. Next you want to update Eclipse. What Eclipse does not do for you, and you just simply have to know, is that you need to do this with root privileges – majority of Eclipse lives in /usr/lib/eclipse. If you skipped the previous step (creating all the work files), then the work files are going to be created with wrong privileges, and subsequently nothing is going to work right; even after I chowned all the ownership on ~/workspace I still had problems. Start Eclipse from a terminal with sudo eclipse. When it asks you where you want to keep your workspace, this time it does not really matter what you tell it – I normally tell it in /tmp.
5. To update Eclipse, select Help > Software Updates > Find and Install, and follow Scenario 1 from the Eclipse wiki.

Step 2. Update Pydev

1. Still as root in Eclipse, again select Help > Software Updates > Find and Install. This time select the second option “Search for new features to install”. Pydev was sold and re-licensed, and I suspect the new owners are not interested in keeping Pydev in the repos. So the new version is actually a new product.
2. I was presented with three sites to search. I did not find anything I was interested in on Callisto Discovery Site. Pydev Extensions is what you want. The Eclipse Project Updates did find things, but I think they buggered up my install, so from now I just avoid them.
   
3. When presented with the available updates, select Pydev. The Pydev Extensions are a paid feature, and I am not using Mylyn.
   
4. Another restart. If you check, you will notice that the Pydev Extension site has been removed. This means that from now on, to update Pydev, you can go through “Search for updates of the currently installed features” and not the “Search for new features to install” route.

Step 3. Install Subclipse

1. Subclipse is a new feature, so still as root in Eclipse go to “Search for new features to install”.
2. This time you have to add a New Remote Site. You get the necessary information from the Subclipse site.
3. After that continue through the wizard. From the presented choices, I only selected Subclipse, minus the Revision Graph which I could not get some dependencies for.
   
4. You need that JavaHL stuff, and contrary to the way things look above, you did not just install it. sudo apt-get install libsvn-javahl
5. Now it gets complicated! Start up Eclipse, and see if it cluedin and figured out what you just did. From the menus select Window > Preferences, and in the popup window select Team > SVN. Under the SVN Interface, you need to see a version of some kind. If you see “Not Available”, Eclipse did not figure it out.
   
6. If it is not right, first check you got the correct version of everything. There is a Subversion server – Subclipse version compatibility, and then Subclipse – JavaHL version compatibility. So, as an example, I am trying to connect to SourceForge which supports Subversion v1.5. So I will need Subclipse at least v1.4, which needs JavaHL v1.5. I am using Mint5 – Ubuntu Hardy – and according to this, I will need to grab JavaHL from their backports repository. If you are running Intrepid – Mint 6 – or later, you should be fine. Including additional repos in your system I will leave as an exercise to the reader.
7. If after all of that it is still not working , you will need to edit your eclipse.ini. I did not have to do this, and I suspect that newer versions of Mint will be the same.

Last word

To remove this mess from your system:

$ sudo bash
# apt-get purge eclipse
# apt-get autoremove
# rm -rf /usr/lib/eclipse

Maybe I’m just spoiled, but all this should not be this difficult!

Update 09/10/26: So apparently I forgot an important step. After doing all these updates you have to rm -rf ~/.eclipse to reset everything on your account. Also, Pydev has been restructured (again), and re-released as version 1.5. Unfortunately, they forgot to notify the update manager, and you have to do it manually – note the ‘Quick Install’ cutesie note on the right hand side.

Did I mention that is beyond-stupid complicated?

The next destination?

It’s October, which means I have been in one place for like 10 months now – woohoo! At the beginning of the year, the kids have been asking that we stay put for a while. Now two have been hinting that they are getting restless. “What was your favourite place, daddy?” “I liked Ireland.”

I came across a story about a place called Florianopolis. Coincidence? I think not…

Big loss for Linux today

Approximately 2 and half years ago I became a serious proponent, dare I say evangelist, of Linux. As of today that is no longer the case.

Without going into all the boring and filthy details, I had some minor problems running a new 64bit kernel, on somewhat new-ish hardware that almost supports 64bits, with some older software. I tried to downgrade – clean reinstall – to something which I had previously confirmed on another machine works perfectly fine. After the install I had serious problems even connecting to the local network – plain DHCP. This is normally an immediate KO criteria for me, and I don’t even bother trying to figure out anything else. This time I did give it a second chance, only to run into more serious problems. Well, I’ll just reinstall back what I had at the beginning of the day and live with the small issues, right? Last time, the install took me under 60 minutes. After the second install I could not get anything to work again! How is it possible to use the exact same install media, on the exact same machine, and get two completely different results? After a day of pondering this dilemma – downtime for my employer – I am installing that other system first thing tomorrow morning.

Here are some myths, that I personally have proven wrong:

Linux is cheaper. You know what? Nobody in the corporate world cares! I have yet to meet anyone anywhere who actually gives a hoot to save money for their employer in this area. Licensing costs for proprietary software, in the corporate world, are somebody else’s problem somewhere else and the software is effectively free to us here.

Linux is technically superior. That may be, but only if you are a geek that reads source code all day. One of my colleagues, whom I respect very much, runs Windows on his desktop, has a MacBook sitting on the desk next to him, wears OpenBSD T-shirts, and runs several different Linuxes in the back room. He is quite fluent in all these OSes. When someone asks him which OS he prefers, his answer is always: “whichever gets the job done the fastest.” The “job” that he is faced with on a daily basis: some marketing drone hassling him to “just get my laptop to work!” Bottom line: All operating systems will have problems. It just so happens that for Windows the problems are assumed by the (l)users, and there is always somebody around who knows how to “just get it to work.” However, if you run into a problem with your Linux machine, everyone just gives you that you-asked-for-it look and a shrug.

I am not expecting to see Linux on the corporate desktop any time soon.

pwned by Windows

I am starting to put together a new piece of a continuous integration framework (the self-test part, of course). This one has to be done on a Windows platform, specifically it has to run on XP and Vista, a first for me.

I am used to having everything that I could possibly need at my fingertips on a base install of Linux. I can’t remember EVER having to go and hunt for some tool that I would need to get something like this done that was not already installed.

I first decided to see how far I could go with a base Windows install; that is, the minimum amount of tools that are not part of the original install. This means that I tried to resort to pure .bat scripting.

Syncing different Windows machines

As is often the case, this has to run on multiple machines. I am just too lazy (and error prone) to go and make one small change on every single machine every time I update something. I want the framework to be self-updating! In order to achieve that, I had to install SVN on all he machines. My first rule broken, and I did not even get started. I did not even try to work around this one: some sick munched up network test if a drive is mounted properly, copy over network if the machine is not down, verify the copied files, decide which one is considered the master, …

Getting the day of week on Windows

I want different tests to run on different days of the week – this is strictly a management decision, there was no technical reason to do this. No big deal. In pure .bat scripting this is quite difficult to get, but not impossible … or is it?

The only command that I could find that gives you the day of week is date /T. It dumps out something in the format: “day date”, where “day” is a three-letter code for the day of week, like “Mon”, “Tue”, etc; and “date” is the current date. Now how to parse that? After like an hour of Googling and browsing the specs, I ended up with:

for /F "tokens=1" %%d in ("%date%") do set day=%%d

Nice, huh? They even have a different way of naming the variables inside the loop, depending if you are doing it from the command line or from a script! To tell you the honest truth, I am not really certain how this actually works. However, the first time I ran it on one of my test machines, %day% ended up being something like “18/08/09″. I’m thinking WTF? Tried it on another machine and got “Tue”. After some more trial and error, I discovered that the output of the date command varies depending on what locale you have set in your preferences. What sick sadistic MF over at Redmond thought this would be a good idea?

Scheduling things in Windows

Of course not everything everywhere is the same. Some parts of the tests need to change between different machines. From the Linux world, I normally did this through environment variables. Bill’s posse decided to outdo Linux by introducing three types of environment variables, only two of which are properly documented! After some trial and error I found a combination that worked … until I tried to run my tests as a Scheduled task. The facts that the tools for scheduling a task 1) are found in completely different location between XP and Vista, 2) have completely redesigned interface, and not for better, and 3) have their file formats that you export/import totally incompatible between the two, no longer dissuaded me. It makes work that much more interesting. But the fact that different variables are passed to the scheduled tasks in different versions of the OS, is another example of Windows’ big middle finger for the programming world.

There was a time once that I used to run a liberated version of Windows on my machine. Today, they could not pay me enough to install that piece of dung on my machine. I wouldn’t want it even for free!

Next: PowerShell.

Happenings?

Not much actually.

So my Noki is now officially outdated. Man, €500 and 19 months later, and stuff is no good anymore. Am I the only one who thinks that a device I pay that much money for should last me at least a decade? Yea, naïve, I know.

Update 09/08/21: Now I know why. Nokia N900 running full Linux. Yea baby!

I am so over 64bit operating systems, regardless of the vendor. I suspect the biggest problem that is killing the whole thing are peripheral vendors. Apparently 64bit support was available in CPUs from 2003, and OS supported it from 2001 – both on the desktop. However, five years after the fact, support from (closed source) hardware vendors is flaky at best! Here is just one example of a miserable issue I recently ran headlong into.

Here is a good one. The other day, while I am installing something – something that I have been installing the same way at work for the past 6 months – out of nowhere pops up the following:

This is a 10-year old product And I get this popup only when I am installing over the network. Anyone know where the heck this comes from

Converting graphics fast

Every once in a while I have to covert/shrink/modify a picture. First off I suck at graphics (one of my sons is WAY better at it), but, like this time, I had to convert something from .svg to .jpeg and shrink it too. The package that you need to do this is imagemagic, and the command is: 'convert <orginal.svg> -resize 150 <target.jpeg>'. There is a huge number of switches that this thing takes. Check it out!

Installing VMware Server on Linux Mint (Ubuntu)

Installing VMware Server is not your typical point-and-click procedure. However, it is quite easy even for those who are a little squeamish with the command line.

Here I will be talking about installing VMware Server version 1.0.9 on Linux Mint 5 – I don’t do the latest’n'greatest anymore. Linux Mint is fully compatible with Ubuntu 8.04, so I would expect this procedure to be very similar, if not identical, for most derivatives and close versions.

VMware are very good at hiding all the useful stuff on their website! Here are all the pieces you are going to have to download:

• VMware Server will require you to build kernel modules. You will need kernel header files for that. On Mint/Ubuntu you already have them at /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/build/include. The installer, further below, will be able to figure it out automatically, assuming you have all the defaults for your system.
• To build stuff, you will need tools. I just grabbed the build-essential package and that had everything.
• The VMware install guide is linked here – you want the Admin Guide, starting somewhere around page 36. I once accidentally found a much more succinct Install Guide on their page, but I can’t find it again. Below is only the relevant distill; however, I would still recommend that you have at least a browse through theirs in case you run into problems. There is also a detailed guide here, which may be of some use if you run into problems.
• VMware is pushing the newer 2.0 version; older version are here – you want to get the “VMware Server for Linux. TAR Binary.” Right on that same page, notice the register for your free serial number(s) link. The server is free, but they will need an e-mail address where they can push more stuff on you.

First you will need to unpack the TAR Binary. You will only need this once, so you might as well do it in /tmp – which gets automatically emptied each time you reboot. Open up a terminal:

cd /tmp
tar xvf ~/Downloads/VMware-server-1.0.9-156507.tar.gz

And continue with the install:

cd vmware-server-distrib
sudo ./vmware-install.pl

I took defaults for everything except the following:

In which directory do you want to install the binary files?
[/usr/bin] /usr/local/bin

On Ubuntu, or any system that has a package manager, it is good idea to keep stuff you install manually somewhere else. The Linux file system has a place specifically for this purpose, and that place is /usr/local.

If you screw the install up, you can run sudo /usr/local/bin/vmware-uninstall.pl so that it cleans up, and then start again.

Next is the configuration. The installer will prompt you, or you can just run explicitly sudo /usr/local/bin/vmware-config.pl. Any time afterwards you want to change something, you will need to rerun this program. For Linux Mint 6 (Ubunt 8.10) or perhaps later, you might need this patch before you configure the VMware – suggestion is to run the configuration program, if it fails install the patch, if it passes just move on. Again, I took defaults except:

You can safely ignore the complaints about the extensions on the Icons, as well as the wrong version of the gcc compiler.

For networking, make sure you bridge all interfaces (ethernet and wireless). I did not use NAT.

In which directory do you want to keep your virtual machine files?
[/var/lib/vmware/Virtual Machines] /home/vmware/machines

The way I have my disk partitions set up, I had to override where the machine images will be kept. The images will be big, make sure the place you tell it has enough space.

If everything worked fine, you should get a new menu entry Applications > System Tools > VMware Server Console. The first time you try to run it, it will not work. If you run vmware from the command line, you will get:

/usr/local/lib/vmware/bin/vmware: /usr/local/lib/vmware/lib/libgcc_s.so.1/libgcc_s.so.1: version `GCC_3.4' not found (required by /usr/lib/libcairo.so.2)
/usr/local/lib/vmware/bin/vmware: /usr/local/lib/vmware/lib/libgcc_s.so.1/libgcc_s.so.1: version `GCC_4.2.0' not found (required by /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6)
/usr/local/lib/vmware/bin/vmware: /usr/local/lib/vmware/lib/libgcc_s.so.1/libgcc_s.so.1: version `GCC_3.4' not found (required by /usr/lib/libcairo.so.2)
/usr/local/lib/vmware/bin/vmware: /usr/local/lib/vmware/lib/libgcc_s.so.1/libgcc_s.so.1: version `GCC_4.2.0' not found (required by /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6)
/usr/local/lib/vmware/bin/vmware: /usr/local/lib/vmware/lib/libgcc_s.so.1/libgcc_s.so.1: version `GCC_3.4' not found (required by /usr/lib/libcairo.so.2)
/usr/local/lib/vmware/bin/vmware: /usr/local/lib/vmware/lib/libgcc_s.so.1/libgcc_s.so.1: version `GCC_4.2.0' not found (required by /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6)

According to the Gentoo team, this file is useless. Once you delete that, the VMware console should come up normally.

Update 09/06/18:

I just tried to do the above on Ubuntu 8.10 64bit. I did need the patch as mentioned above, and I did not get the error about libgcc_s.so.1 when starting vmware. However, I did run into an issue starting up my virtual machine. At first you get a blank error (as in: “The process exited with an error: End of error message.”), but if you turn on debugging in the advanced options you can see the actual error:

Version mismatch with vmmon module: expecting 138.0, got 137.0.
You have an incorrect version of the `vmmon' kernel module.
Try reinstalling VMware Server.

And they’re not kidding. The fix is that you have to configure vmware twice!

Then there was a second surprise: my arrow keys (along with a bunch of others) did not work inside vmware. There is an explanation as well as a solution, at the VMware Knowledge Base.

Every once in a while the keyboard will stop responding to mapped keys – things like Crtl-Alt-LArrow to switch desktops – you can run setxkbmap to fix it.

Update 09/06/24:

For some other reasons, I updated my box to Ubuntu 9.04 AMD64. When recompiling vmware I hit some SSL key errors.

Update 09/07/22: Bottom line: If you are going to go with VMware 1.x do not go over Ubuntu 8.04 (Mint 5). After several months of running it on 9.04×64, I feel it is quite unstable! Also, if you do want to virtualize 64bit operating systems, make sure your BIOS supports this thing … upfont.

Biological computer virus

Every once in a while I have a day when lots of unexplainable and unreproducible things just happen to computers all around me. Yesterday was one of those days.

It started out trying to get VMware to acknowledge my wireless network. No good, but this never worked for me, so nothing new so far. Next, when trying to connect to work, I found that VPN networks was gone from the network manager – OpenVPN was still installed, just not showing up in the GUI. Then the kicker: I noticed that OpenOffice.org Quickstarter was gone from the notification area, so I go to launch it from the menu. It just disappeared from my computer; like not just the Quickstarter, but like the whole thing! It was even reported as not installed in Synaptic. After reinstalling it, Quickstarter still would not come up. I have come to expect things like my RSS feeds on the partnerpage.google.com not working, but yesterday they were redirected to a completely different feed. Well I chose this day to install my son’s new computer – how do you think that went? Well, you would be wrong! I burned the .iso onto a CD and had the computer confirm that the burn was successful. When I took the CD over to the new computer it told me that the CD is blank. I got smart – just gave up, turned off everything, and went to bed with a book.

This morning at work I find, of course, that all tests from previous day failed.

Linux Backup & Reinstall

Last week I spent some time playing with DreamLinux (again), trying to get it onto a thumb-drive / memory-stick / whatever-you-call-those-things (again). Dream hosed my system (again). This time I lost my swap?!?! I’m sorry guys, but that installer sucks! It’s just as well, there were a few changes that I had been wanting to do to my system anyways which would require a complete reinstall.

The procedure that I basically follow is:

1. Backup home. You have to do this as root, so that hoses the ownership of all the files. I know there is a way to do it correctly and preserve the ownership, but it actually does not matter that much – see further below.
2. Install the system wiping the drive(s) clean.
3. Install critical updates. In the case of Mint I do only levels 1 and 2. I am running Mint 5, which is based on Ubuntu 8.04, so at this point I also install the top bugs from Ubuntu 8.04.2.
4. Clean the system – remove things that you definitely do not want. Install restricted drivers.
5. Create a second “administrator” account, log in to populate the home.
6. Crete all other users, log in to each to populate their home. I have an (apparently) weird habit of putting all my users into the group “users” as opposed to the default group == username, and giving their home 700 permissions.
7. Log in as the “administrator” and restore backups. Can’t restore (or backup for that matter) my own home when I am using it. I used to get around this by running a live-CD, but this seems like so much less work. Change owner and group of all the user’s files to themselves.
8. Install all apps.
9. Get my kids to install all games.

There is one app that, IMHO, should get special attention: Eclipse. Eclipse has it’s own package management built in. I normally install Eclipse along with any plugins that I want through Synaptic, and then I “pin” them – lock that version – so that Synaptic or Mint Update will not try to update these. I then go into Eclipse – have to run it as root in this case – and update the whole thing from within Eclipse.

e-mail: Bad form of communication

Today we live in a society where people are unreasonably easily offended or they can misinterpret even the best of intentions and freak out. If you don’t believe me ask any guy what started the last fight he had with his girlfriend. I am surprised how often we are ready to shoot the messenger, and nobody stops and considers that perhaps the problem lies on the receiving end. How did we get this way?

The email is the worst medium. It seems to me that people completely loose their brains when given access to email. How many times have you received a joke email, that has been forwarded around the world several times and the mail contains the complete history of all addresses that it has passed through. Sometimes, these jokes can be quite offensive. I personally am hardly ever offended, usually just pissed at the waste of bandwidth. But I know how to set up my mail filters to not even be bothered by these slightly-better-than-spam annoyances. What gets me though, is the history: everyone’s mail address, along with their fancy signature “VP of this large company”, “Senior PR Manager of that prestigious corporation”, and these people never stop and think … maybe this is going to get, with my name and all, somewhere I don’t want it to go. The best IMHO are the legal threats at the bottom of each and every single iteration: “intended only for the recipient only … please delete immediately or we will take action …” These people are obviously not even paying attention to what they are spewing out into the world. Crackberry addicts are the worst; someone may be the most intelligent and most well spoken person you will ever meet, but put a Crackberry into their hands and within a matter of minutes they turn into a drooling mumbling moron. GMail has even created the Oh shit button because of these people! Can you imagine that particular development session: “So majority of our user are idiots, can we do something about that?”

I am basically peeved that 1) people do not think before they forward something, and 2) when they get offended by an email, they don’t stop and consider: “hey, maybe it’s me and not them.” Well, at least smileys make everything if not better than acceptable.

PS: I really do like you, and I do want to be your friend, but please remove me from your address book. Thank You.

Arrrgh! Mateys

PTB is getting a lot of press lately. The whole lawsuit is probably a waste of effort, and money, and court time, and….. The Internet will fight back, and to boot the press is making martyrs out of these guys. This is the same thing as when in the late ’80s they tried to ban offensive lyrics in music, and then kids would go into stores with: “Could I get anything with a warning label on it.” I am on the side of the PTB guys. I think the music and movie industries and their copyright laws are outdated, ridiculous, and in serious need of overhaul.

But even if the *AAs get their way. Look what happened when they tried to take down Napster – we got BitTorrent. If they, by some freak chance do take down BitTorrent, that will only lead to something different and better and harder to take down.

I love this: Canadian pirates have been threatening the American music industry in 1897 – not a typo, yeah, that’s like the nineteenth century – and apparently we are still threatening it today. I think this is generally refered to as FUD.

Test automation candidates

This post is about a topic near and dear to me: test automation. Surprisingly, the first one.

I am working on a new project which requires UI (front-end) automation. I am one of the few that actually makes a distinction between front-end and back-end automation – completely different set of tools for the task IMHO. Anyway, new project … UI automation. My boss asked me to do a little analysis of what is out there, and come up with some recommendations. I immediately grabbed for what I know, but was told to make things fair and that I should also look at some alternatives, especially the big boys.

HP: A lot of people in the industry keep gushing about “QTP”. Check out this totally obvious and easy to remember URL: https://h10078.www1.hp.com/cda/hpms/display/main/hpms_content.jsp?zn=bto&cp=1-11-15-24^1322_4000_100__ – this is not the download URL, this is the main page! So I get on there. They are obviously going to try and get a vacuum hooked into my wallet, so I go through the 5 minute registration process, didn’t even lie about my contact info, then they mail me a URL to the 1.3GB download; servers kept timing out, but eventually I got through it somehow. 2 hours later I’m ready for the tutorial, in the hopes that I will pick up the gist of the thing. The only thing I found out is that the trial license does not include enough components to even get through the tutorial. I e-mail sales@hp, nobody got back to me.

Borland: A good friend of mine is working with Silk, and can’t say enough good things about it. Way back, I used to work with some of their stuff; these guys invented the idea of an IDE AFAIK. Did not even realize the company is still around today. Basically same situation with the download as above. However, sales were a little more proactive, very little. Basically, the sales drone called me up with what is the problem. I told him that servers keep timing out, and if there is any chance they could ship me a CD. He, very slowly, responded with: “Well, you know, our software is rather complex and not easy to use.” I felt like he is telling me that I am probably too dumb to use their software. So I thanked him and hung up.

IBM: I was, by far, the most impressed with them … almost! First, I got here via Rational Robot. Apparently IBM gobbled up the whole thing (Rational that is). Their site, out of the three (maybe four), is the worst to navigate. Somehow I downloaded Robot, and started going through the tutorial. After a little while I simply gave up in frustration. This has to be the most unintuitive piece of software out there. Their sales got in touch with me, without any prompt from my end, and immediately invited me to a one-day seminar. Sure, why not. I told them about my download troubles, and asked for a CD. “Absolutely not a problem, we’ll have one waiting for you at the seminar!” At the seminar, they confirmed that Robot indeed sucks, and they are only keeping it around for the name and legacy projects! But they got this new thing called Rational Functional Tester: installs as a plug-in into Eclipse or Visual Studio (whichever is your poison), and the test recorder dumps out either Java or VB.NET tests. We are a C# house. Then they have this entire management platform built around it, which they spent the next 6 hours of the 7 hour seminar showing off. My reaction to it: we would need to at least double our management staff to have enough people to click through everything. I mean I can see a lot of potential in this platform for a very large company … which is exactly the reason why I don’t like working for very large companies: because they use software exactly like this to manage stuff, and it ends up being just a time sink. However, during breaks I kept hassling one of their consultants about the Functional Tester. He showed me this thing they call Data-Driven Testing: you record one test, parametrize it, and then you feed into it data from something like an Excel spreadsheet, and it goes through everything. “Neat! So how do you set this up in RFT?” “Unfortunately, RFT does not do any of the work for you, you have to code everything up yourself: the data, the data parser, and the driver.” “Hmmm, OK, so how difficult is to code up tests from scratch.” “Well, first you need to point RFT at your application, so that it learns all the controls.” “Can’t I code those up myself?” “No, that part is proprietary. But it will become part of the IDE as methods and you can then use code-completion when you are coding up your tests.” “What if the tool cannot recognize some obscure control of my app that I need?” “That’s what we have consultants for!” “And how do you hook it all up to a continuous build system?” “Well you have something monitor say a file on a server, and then start up the IDE and kick off the tests.” “No, I mean how do you run it unattended?” “Yea … monitor a file … start the IDE …” “You mean I need to install the IDE (in my case Visual Studio, a licensed IDE) on the server where I am going to run tests unattended?” “Yes” “So in my case, the license that I pay you guys would basically be only for the UI control recognition mechanism, as everything else I have to code up myself, and if that happens to fail I have to pay you more money?” “Yes”

We’re going with Selenium. More info, less fluff, coming soon…