As I mentioned in my last post I did'nt have an internet connection for most of the day so did'nt get a chance to write up yesterdays AgileNorth 2007 conference where I was speaking on MbUnit. I did manage to write up my thoughts on my way home and here they are.
Today was a long day, I did'nt get to bed until 1am, was up at 6am and I write this on the train home and its pushing 8pm. I do find conferences really take it out of you and speaking is even more draining, worrying about your session and then winding down after wards. I really enjoyed today though, my session was very well attended (around 30 in a room that holds 31/32) and I was up against Luke Barrett :) I had some great questions and I have taken a lot of value in the discussions I had afterwards with folks. With this mornings release of V3 I coded some V3 demos after my session and managed a 'scottgu' in taking a group of folks through it in the bar after the conference wrapped up. I really enjoyed meeting everyone and had some great discussions with Nancy Van Schooenderwoert and Chris Matts, both are key agile folks and there discussions were very thought provoking. Luke was also a lot of fun to talk to and we have long chat about the tools ThoughtWorks are working on. I look foward to do more with the AgileNorth community in the coming months.
I am running behind today, I had very limited internet access yesterday so this is a little behind. It's been a little over three months since our last release of MbUnit but we been stepping up the work we have been doing since on the summer to bring you the first cut of Gallio Test Automation Platform (Gallio for short) and MbUnit v3. This project has been a massive undertaking in that entire code base has been rewriteen, a ground up rewrite of everything, framework, runners, everything. As ever my thanks to the entire MbUnit commit team (in particular Jeff as v3 lead, Julian, Vadim and Graham). The release notes which I am taking from Jeffs post are as follows (FYA if you not already done so I highly recommend you add Jeffs blog to your reader of choice, Jeff will be working up more posts on features and functionality that you will want to check out).
Alpha 1 marks a significant milestone: much of the groundwork is in place. It doesn't look like much yet, but there's a whole lot going on inside. We can run MbUnit v2, MbUnit v3, NUnit v2 and xUnit.Net beta 2 tests in a variety of ways, generate reports, write plugins, and produce installer packages with integrated documentation. We can also do nifty things like embed attachments, such as WatiN screenshots, into reports.
However, this release is primarily of interest to fellow toolsmiths. We do not recommend using it in a production environment at this time. This is a work in progress. Some parts are already quite polished but there are still many loose ends. Many planned features are absent. We appreciate your interest and support in our efforts!
Alpha 2 will consolidate what we've accomplished with Alpha 1 to deliver a genuinely useful product. We plan to incorporate more work from NBehave, NUnit and other teams we are bringing on board. In addition, we'll pick up the pace on the development of the end-user tools (particularly the GUI) and of the framework components. This is also when MbUnit v3 will begin to blossom.
So whats going on here, Gallio is a neutral test platform that is an off shoot from the work we had done on MbUnit v3. Gallio is both a common framework and a set of runners for testing tools. MbUnit v3 uses Gallio as its native test platform, Gallio can also as Jeff mentions run MbUnit, NUnit and XUnit.net tests. For both migration purposes and to help improve how you are using your existing test framework we hope this will prove useful. We still have a lot of work to do but make no secrets of what we are up to, check out our road map. I do want to draw attention to the work we are doing with our new runners. Starting with Icarus, our new GUI.
Yes thats a NUnit test loaded and the tests run.
Same set of tests now using the MbUnit v2 framework instead.
Icarus is built on the Presenter-First pattern and I am also doing some work with readapting some of patterns domians to WPF (for a prototype WPF GUI). The pattern is already proving its self in breaking down our concerns and improving the testability of the app. As you can see Icarus has a brand new interface and over time will have improved filtering and reporting, look for alpha 2. Our new console runner, Echo, is also a more richer affair.
Echo also has richer reporting and filtering that get better and better as we hit alpha 2, check out the improved display. In addition we have also have new TD.Net, MsBuild and NAnt tasks (which can all run the same set of frameworks as Icarus and Echo) and for alpha 2 will be adding the much wanted R# runner. Lastly check out the improved HTML reporting.
Well hopefully no storms :) I am here at AgileNorth, due to a hitch with the internet my track has switched rooms and while the keynote is on I am sat in the empty room trying to get the projector works, making sure my code works, make sure my backup and its backup works, trying not to get nervous and waiting for the speaker spotlight to start in roughly five mins time. I'll see you on the other side.
Been off the radar these last few weeks, lots of reasons why but getting back to speed slowly.
Ben gave his MbUnit session at DDD6 over the weekend.
The turn out for his talk was well attended and both Ben and fellow MbUnit crew member Dan Maharry have got some great MbUnit feedback from the folks. Ben has has some great feedback on his talk, check out these posts from Richard Fennell and Paul Lockwood. I echo Pauls statement.
watch this guy he will do well!
Ben is a great guy and software engineer, he will indeed go very far.
It is my turn on Thursday with my session at the AgileNorth 2007 conference here in Manchester. These last few weeks have been very busy and very stressful but hopefully my session will be enjoyed and I look forward to seeing everyone there. Slides, code and notes will go up on the AgileNorth site after my session. I will also try and get some post event posts up as follow up.