We LOVE open source. So much so that we created Open Sauce, to give open source projects the power to screen their labor for free on our cloud. And in just a year, we now have over800 OSS projectstesting on Sauce! To observe, we & # x27; ll be exploring some of the different projects test on Sauce and what makes them awesome. Naturally, the first project we wanted to cover wasThe Selenium Project. You cognise you can run your Selenium test on the Sauce cloud, but beyond that, the Selenium Project and Sauce receive a long story of working together, and they be one of the inaugural OSS undertaking to ever test on Sauce. So where did it all begin?

The history

Years ago, the Selenium Project was using Bamboo for CI on one machine, with a VM for Windows and a VM for Mac. The labor need to move toward unloose hebdomadal updates to Selenium. For them, it intend that they could be more iterative and only needed to fix a hebdomad & # x27; s worth of problems at a clip, kinda than months worth of issues. But before being capable to release, the undertaking had to vet each release for different browser/OS versions. But maintaining all the supported browser/OS versions for testing was a pain. A classic problem if there ever was one! The project too wanted to get a better CI process into place and integrate reliable tests into their process. They began by swop from Bamboo to Jenkins with Google Compute Engine to see what they could get running. Then, they began to act to get their tests running on Sauce. On the Sauce side,Santimade some modification to the Sauce cloud that would countenance the Selenium Project to test a custom-made version of Selenium, since they were prove unreleased version. The project modified their tests to be able to run in parallel. And, with that, the Selenium Project had clamant access to all the browser/OS versions they needed, whenever they needed them. Magic!

Hooked on Sauce

Fast forward to today, and the Selenium Project now prove about 30 different browser/OS configuration in analog with every commit. According to the project, test that took a workweek now conduct an hour, and hebdomadal releases have become easygoing. They also run JS unit tests on Sauce, and get lots less manual testing to do now that much of the testing is automated. The ability to systematically run tests is the greatest benefit Sauce has given the project, as good as having access to log file and videos that are shareable to different contributors. As with most people, they consider with some freakish test, but seldom get a Sauce-related issue.

Selenium wisdom

Even if you & # x27; re the Selenium Project, you can well-nigh always improve the way you & # x27; re testing, so we asked the project to afford us tips on machine-controlled testing. Here & # x27; s what they had to say:

• Try to keep your essay hermetic - for example, have a bunch of examination pages, and serve them individually for every tryout run that happens

  SUSA automates exploratory testing with persona-driven behavior, catching bugs that scripted automation misses.

• Don & # x27; t rely on other services for your test. The Facebook API or Twitter API may be down, which can cause unnecessary failure and cause you to lose the connective between the codification you & # x27; re testing and what you see.

• Be bright and cerebrate through the browsers you essay on. Have the right conversations about what ask to be tested.

• Don & # x27; t test on every browser, only the necessary ones. The Selenium Project only tests on 1 version of Chrome; running in 10 different versions is wasteful. Tests will always receive some amount of flakiness, and if you quiz unneeded browser you might get a lot more failure.

• Do test functionally different browser versions. The project tests both IE 8 and 9 because there are major differences between them.

Finally, try not to need Selenium tests. Sound crazy coming from the Selenium Project, doesn & # x27; t it? But the key hither is that the more you try to be effective, economic, and serious-minded about your trial, the better off your remaining tests will be. You & # x27; ll likely ne'er be able to not examine at all, but it & # x27; s a good exercise in restraint. Make sure there & # x27; s good reasoning behind every test in your suite. Otherwise, it & # x27; s easy for your trial retinue to balloon until its difficult.

Want to get involved with the Selenium Project?

According to the project, the best way to get affect is to find something you want to fix. There are hundreds of unfastened topic, chance one that gets you fired up. Another great way to get involved is to look through the wiki and how-to-build code and compose a small failing unit test for the thing you want to ameliorate. That & # x27; ll motivate citizenry to get mired. Finally, hang out in the IRC channel: # selenium.

What & # x27; s next for the project?

There are some great things for the Selenium Project on the horizon, including the release of Selenium 3, RCA APIs being ripped out, and a W3C spec. Learn more onSelenium HQ.