Friday, November 30, 2007

JSFUnit Beta 1 is Released !!!

As I write this I look at the title and wonder how many exclamation points I should have used. What I thought would be a tiny little framework has grown into a full-fledged project with a real beta release. We even have live demos.

JBoss JSFUnit is the first open source community dedicated to testing JSF applications. With this release, it is not one, but three different tools:
  • In-container Testing framework This is for testing both client and server side JSF artifacts. Test scope ranges from fine-grained tests of individual classes to full-fledged integration testing of a running JSF application. This is done with no mock objects, so you know you are getting reliable real-world behavior in your tests.
  • Framework for JSF Static Analysis testing This allows you to test your JSF configuration so that you find config problems early.
  • JSFTimer for performance testing of the JSF lifecycle This shows you how long each phase of the JSF lifecycle took for a given request. Of course, it also gives you total JSF lifecycle time. The JSFTimer allows you to write threshold tests that fail whenever a use case doesn't meet your performance standards.
If you want more info, read the other posts in this blog and then take a look at www.jsfunit.org.

But now a few more words about the release itself. First, it's called Beta 1. To me, that implies a few things. The first implication is that it's useful. Even before a downloadable release was ready, many developers built the project from subversion and started using it. So I know it meets my main criteria for a beta, which is that it fills a need. It's useful, so by all means, feel free to use it.

The second thing about being a beta release is that it's not done. That is, we know some features are missing. Mainly, JSFUnit needs support for more Ajax components and it needs more deployment tools.

The last thing I want to say about the release is "Thank You". First, thanks goes to Dennis Byrne of ThoughtWorks and Matt Wringe of JBoss. These guys contributed code to the project and continue to be active. We need more help as demand for bug fixes and new features has ballooned even before we ever released. So if you want to help out just send me an email or post on this blog and let me know how you'd like to get involved.

Second, I want to thank Julien Viet, JBoss Portal lead, and Patrick McDonald, my manager at JBoss/Red Hat. These guys have given the high level support that made it possible for me to work on the project in the first place.

Lastly, thanks to all who have been the early, early, early adopters. Your feedback on the JSFUnit forums and through email have been invaluable.

So try it out. Let me know what you think.

So long, and thanks for all the fish,

Stan Silvert
www.jsfunit.org

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