Running Selenium Tests through JUnit in Hudson

Question

Hi,

apologies for the somewhat confusing title :-) Basically, I've configured my Selenium tests to run through JUnit when I build the project through maven. If I start my Selenium Server in a command prompt and then run the maven build goal in another cmd prompt then the tests runs as expected.

I figured that this process would be easy to implement in Hudson but it has proven quite problematic. I can start my selenium server as before and then configure the build to kick off via a hudson job. However, hudson doesn't seem to be picking up the selenium server - I get an error message which says the following:

Unable to obtain goal [test:test]

The reason I think that hudson isn't contacting the selenium server is because when I run the junit tests through my own command prompt with my server stopped, I get the same error message.

Its also important to note that I used to use the seleniumHQ plugin for hudson to run my tests using html files - but wish to change to JUnit as its more flexible.

Any help on this is very much appreciated!

Thanks, Gearoid.

Answer 1

Is there a config file with the server URL that is not being picked up running inside Hudson? Can you print the server URL to make sure it's pointing at the right place?

Answer 2

You could use the selenium-maven-plugin to start and stop the selenium server automatically as part of the maven build process.

Answer 3

I recommend that you run selenium tests separately from the test:test goal.

You can create two hudson builds for your project, with the second build being triggered by the successful completion of the first build.

Why would you do this?

• Unit tests complete faster, so your feedback time is mush shorter
• the second build can run a shell script or ant instead of maven, aloowing you easier control of your remote server
• The selenium tests won't be triggered by mvn test on a developer machine, which could cause conflicts.
• You can run two hudson nodes in a "farm" configuration, the second instance can run on the same server as selenium. Server affinity can be set up for specific builds.