• connect to the Continuous Integration server of sun (http://deadlock.netbeans.org/hudson/job/ruby/)
• Guess what's the latest stable build file name and download it to a temp location (depending on your OS)
• rename the old install
• unzip the build to the netbeans installation folder
• delete the downloaded zip from the tmp location

You need to install mechanize:

gem install mechanize

Hten, copy the following code to a ruby file and adapt the last two lines to your configuration. The 1st paramater is the "netbeans installation folder" and the
second one your tmp folder.

Example:

script = NetbeansUpdaterScript.new("/home/jeanmichel/ruby/programs", "/tmp")

script.run

require 'rubygems'
require 'hpricot'
require 'open-uri'
require 'mechanize'
require 'fileutils'

class GenericScript
def download_from(url, save_as)
  mechanize = WWW::Mechanize.new  
  mechanize.get(url).save_as(save_as)
  puts "downloaded " + url + " and saved to " + save_as
end

def remove(file_or_directory)  
  FileUtils.remove_dir(file_or_directory, true) if File.directory?(file_or_directory)
  FileUtils.rm file_or_directory if File.file?(file_or_directory)
  puts "remove " + file_or_directory
end

def unzip_file(file, target_dir) 
  system(
  "unzip", "-q", file, "-d", target_dir
  ) or raise "Error extracting (#{$?}): unzip #{file.inspect} -d #{target_dir.inspect}"
  puts "unzip " + file + " to " + target_dir
end

def is_using_mac?
  RUBY_PLATFORM == /darwin/
end

end

class NetbeansUpdaterScript < tmp_folder = "/tmp" netbeans_installation_folder =" netbeans_installation_folder" netbeans_folder_path =" @netbeans_installation_folder" tmp_folder =" tmp_folder" netbeans_installer_file =" @tmp_folder" doc =" Hpricot(open(" last_stable_build_number =" doc.inner_html" last_stable_build_number=" + @last_stable_build_number.to_s     @last_stable_build_number   end       def url_latest_build                     get_last_stable_build_number          if is_using_mac?       " script =" NetbeansUpdaterScript.new(">

I have used this script for a week and it seems to work alright but I'd be happy to hear some feedback about the code or any problem you might have.

At last, I upgraded to the latest stable version of Ubuntu last week. So far, I am very pleased: my firefox, amarok, openoffice and netbeans were very unstable and now everything seems to worl like a charm! The network manager is also very cool: 30s to connecto to a WPA2 network!

However, the 3D and funky effects (Berryl window manager) don't work perfectly so I had to uninstall them (I can live without!).

Apart from the fact I could not find a good software for screencasting, I am very happy with Ubuntu even if I'll probably buy a mac in 2008 anyway

Well done Ubuntu!

“Ici Paris, la Blogosphère parle aux francophones: Les pingouins qui, depuis de nombreuses années, sont à la tête des geeks francophones ont formé un projet de livrer des applications en retard avec du code non testé. Ces applications, alléguant la défaite de nos comités QA, se sont mis en rapport avec le GrandBugQuiNiqueTout pour cesser le combat. Certes, nous avons été, nous sommes, submergés par la tradition du cycle en cascade, la tradition du “Ca marche a 83%” et la loi de Murphy, de l'ennemi. Infiniment plus que leur nombre, ce sont l'absence de tests unitaires, une mauvaise communication et l'incompétence des personnes chargées du planning qui nous font reculer. Ce sont l'absence de reconnaissance de l'excellence technique des geeks qui aiment le travail bien fait, la horde de fichiers de configuration XML qui dupliquent sans fin les même informations et le manque d'”Agilité” des projets (Planning en continue, Itérations courtes, Tests Unitaires, Intégration Continue, Rétrospective) en générale qui ont surpris nos chefs au point de les amener là où ils en sont aujourd'hui. ....".

After having read Aslak Hellesoy's post Watir reports with screenshots using RSpec and Win32::Screenshot, I got very excited because this was exactly the kind of thing I had been daydreaming while taking my morning shower (don't you?).
Aslak's article explains how to use Watir and Internet Explorer on Windows to generate rspec reports with screenshots. Garps! I am working on linux (ubuntu Feisty) as I can't afford a mac (yet) and can't stand Windows. I got a bit frustrated because I wanted to do the same thing on my ubuntu.

So, I decided to do a bit of researches and x*y*z hours later (sic), I got my selenium+rspec taking screenshots! My intention is to contribute to the RSpec sub-project spec_ui.

To get a 30s answer, please watch the flah screencast I have made of netbeans executing rake spec:selenium, running the selenium server, Webrick, lanching firefox and taking a screenshot after having maximized the screen.

Here is the code in spec_helper.rb :

 config.before(:all, :behaviour_type => :view) do       
    selenium_remote_control_manager = SeleniumRemoteControlManager.new
    selenium_remote_control_manager.start_webrick
    selenium_remote_control_manager.start_selenium_server
    @browser = selenium_remote_control_manager.get_firefox
    @browser.start
 end

 config.after(:each, :behaviour_type => :view) do
   Spec::Ui::ScreenshotFormatter.take_screenshot_of(@browser)
 end

 config.after(:all, :behaviour_type => :view) do
   @browser.kill! rescue nil
 end

And the code of contact_list_spec.rb:

describe "/contact/list", :behaviour_type => :view  do 
 include SeleniumSpecHelper

 it "should provide a description automatically (TODO extract)" do       
   open "/contact/list"
   @browser.is_text_present("Frequently Texted").should be_true
   # This line will fail :-)
   @browser.is_text_present("All Contact Tak tak").should be_true       
 end
  
end 

I have used imagemagick to capture the screenshot.

I have had the chance to meet Aslak at an irb meeting in the beautiful Oslo and we talked about rspec and selenium. He told me about the idea of generating screencast from the execution of a selenium rspec and I have started to implement it. I am really close to get a solution but I will publish it by the end of july.

Here are a few features I'd like to have / implement for testing Rails Views:

• a nice BNL compatible with watir and selenium
  
• take a screenshot from the specs in order to generate nice documentation, not only when a spec fails
  
• generate a good looking html doc with a sidebar - a la javadoc. And an AJAX search a la gotapi.com ;-) In a funky world, this would be connected to subversion and allow specs to be updated
  
• to be completed ...
  

To conclude, I hope that tools such as greenpepper and RSpec are announcing the beginning of the end of "Microsoft Word" and "PrintScreen" as tools for writing specifications. Obviously, there will be some serious Manager / Customer / Developper resistance before accepting that tests are part of the delivery and THE only accurate specifications but let's wait for 5-10 years and see in 2012 how people work ;-)

The excellent BDD framework RSpec has been very active these days, and the 1.0 version was immediatly followed by minor uptates. As their web site seems to not contain a blog or RSS feed, I have used the excellent idea and tool page2rss.com to generate a RSS feed on changes from the

I have described the steps to install and configure rspec, the Autotest module from ZenTest and a notifier for Ubuntu.

Make sure you have the latest rubygems (0.9.4)

Installing  rspec

cd <your project home>
ruby script/plugin install svn://rubyforge.org/var/svn/rspec/tags/CURRENT/rspec
ruby script/plugin install svn://rubyforge.org/var/svn/rspec/tags/CURRENT/rspec_on_rail

Installing and configuring Zentest

sudo gem install ZenTest

#!/usr/bin/env ruby

module Autotest::GnomeNotify

  # Time notification will be displayed before disappearing automatically
  EXPIRATION_IN_SECONDS = 4
  ERROR_STOCK_ICON = "gtk-dialog-error"
  SUCCESS_STOCK_ICON = "gtk-dialog-info"

  # Convenience method to send an error notification message
  #
  # [stock_icon]   Stock icon name of icon to display
  # [title]        Notification message title
  # [message]      Core message for the notification
  def self.notify stock_icon, title, message
    options = "-t #{EXPIRATION_IN_SECONDS * 1000} -i #{stock_icon}"
    system "notify-send #{options} '#{title}' '#{message}'"
  end

  Autotest.add_hook :red do |at|
    notify ERROR_STOCK_ICON, "Tests failed", "#{at.files_to_test.size} tests failed"
  end

  Autotest.add_hook :green do |at|
    notify SUCCESS_STOCK_ICON, "All tests passed, good job!", ""
  end

end

# a pop up window will appear to display the tests results
# More examples in /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/zentest-3.5.0/example_dot_autotest.rb

# see http://ph7spot.com/articles/getting_started_with_autotest

sudo apt-get install libnotify-bin

Finally, from the Rails project’s root, type:

autotest


Pressing Control-C twice in quick succession will exit Autotest back to the shell prompt.

Integration with netbeans

As far as I am concerned, netbeans ruby-ide is the first IDE to integrate autotest. Select your project root in the Projects windows, right click and then "Auto Test". This will open an output window and run Autotest. This is very cool, check out the screenshot: