Integration With Continuous Integration (CI) Systems

Applies to TestComplete 12.60, last modified on September 17, 2018

Continuous integration (CI) is a software development approach that implies merging changes made by developers several times a day and making frequent automated builds and tests. If your company uses continuous integration, then, most likely, it uses a special continuous integration system like Jenkins, Bamboo, Team Foundation Server, or other. That system builds your software regularly and runs automated tests after each build on one or more test computers. This topic explains how you can include TestComplete in your CI cycles.

Supported Continuous Integration Systems

You can start TestComplete from the command line and pass the tests to be run through the command-line arguments, or you can run tests by using COM interfaces of TestComplete. This allows you to integrate your tests with almost any continuous integration system: Jenkins, Team Foundation System, Bamboo, TeamCity, Zephyr and many others. For some CI systems, TestComplete offers special extensions that simplify the test run. For others, you can try using the TestComplete command-line arguments.

At the moment, TestComplete documentation includes instructions for integrating with the following CI systems:

If you use another CI system, read about the general approach below and see your CI system documentation for information on starting programs from the command line.

It is important that you open an interactive user session on the computers where TestComplete will run. See below.

You can run TestComplete tests with TestComplete or TestExecute – a lightweight resource-friendly test runner.

General Approach

Requirements

The computers, where your CI system will run TestComplete tests, are often called agent machines. They must meet the following requirements:

  • They must have TestComplete or TestExecute installed.

  • Important: The agent machines must have an interactive user session started. These sessions imply that a user works with the operating system and applications through the GUI (windows, menus, controls and so on). Quite often, CI systems use GUI-less sessions on agent machines. TestComplete tests cannot work in these sessions, because the GUI does not exist, and TestComplete cannot simulate user actions on windows and controls.

  • Your project or project suite files must be available on these computers.

    You can store your project files in a source control repository and configure your CI system to take them from the repository to the computer where your tests will run.

    – or –

    You can store your project files in a shared network folder to which the agent machines have access.

  • TestComplete or TestExecute must have access to all the resources, applications and files required for testing. Also, TestComplete (or TestExecute) must have appropriate access permissions for these files and resources.

  • If you are planning to run TestComplete tests in testing environments provided by CrossBrowserTesting.com, you must have an active CrossBrowserTesting account with TestComplete support. You must also provide valid account information so that TestComplete can connect to the CrossBrowserTesting cloud from your computers.

Integration Steps

  1. Install TestComplete or TestExecute on the computer where your automated tests will run.

  2. Configure your CI system to prepare your testing environment. For instance, configure it to place your test project in a folder to which the agent machines have access.

  3. Important: Open an interactive user session on the computer where the tests will run. You can do this manually, or use various third-party utilities to open interactive user sessions on remote machines.

  4. Configure your CI system to start TestComplete or TestExecute on the needed computer and run the tests. See TestComplete Command Line.

  5. If needed, configure your CI system to get TestComplete test logs.

    Note: By default, TestComplete stores test results in the XML format. You can configure TestComplete to export results in the HTML and MHT formats or to pack them into an archive. To learn more, see Working With Test Results.

  6. If needed, configure your CI system to clean your test environment after the test runs are over.

See Also

TestComplete Command Line
Integration With Jenkins
Running TestComplete Tests From MSBuild Projects
Running TestComplete Tests as Part of Team Builds

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