Re: Future of HttpUnit?

On Mar 8, 2006, at 11:35 PM, William Pietri wrote:

> Russell Gold wrote:
>> On Feb 28, 2006, at 2:57 AM, William Pietri wrote:
>>> Right now it looks like HttpUnit is likely to stay about where it  
>>> is, as a good library for testing traditional web apps that don't  
>>> use much JavaScript. Is that the case?
>>
>> My goal is to replace the current Xerces HTML DOM with a custom  
>> HttpUnit one that can handle the full range of JavaScript behavior  
>> needed for AJAX. How quickly this happens (and it has been slower  
>> than I would like) depends on a number of factors, including  
>> access at work and whether people are willing to contribute to pay  
>> something for my time or that of anyone else who wants to help.
>
> Regarding the former, would switching to Subversion help?  
> Sourceforge now has Subversion installed and they run it over port  
> 443 and HTTPS, so that gets through a lot of proxies.

I am looking into that now, working to get all of my changes out of  
working copies and into the repository, and setting up a local  
subversion repository as a testbed. I don't know yet what will get  
through our proxy - it tends to be very picky, but I hope to figure  
that out in the next week or so.
>
> Regarding the latter, I'll keep my ears open. Do you have ballpark  
> numbers on cost and time to move toward Firefox and/or IE  
> compatibility? It's going to end up in a sentence like, "Well, we  
> could use Selenium for free, or we could pay X to have the needed  
> features added to HttpUnit, which would be better because of A, B,  
> and C."

I don't know yet - I think that the direction I am going in will make  
that relatively easy, but I am not certain.

>
> Another way to fund the work is to sell time as an expert on  
> testing web sites. Automated tests are becoming more and more  
> popular, and a lot of people are excited about it. Being the leader  
> of a popular open-source project gives you the opportunity for a  
> market premium as a consultant. Right now its looking kinda dusty,  
> but I don't think it would take much to kick it back into vitality.  
> And my main focus is on coaching Extreme Programming teams, so I'm  
> glad to refer people to you.

An intriguing notion  - I have wanted to move into consulting for  
some time. My expertise is largely in software development process  
(I've been mentoring people in XP practices such as unit-testing and  
refactoring for some time) and am a Certified Scrum Master, although  
not yet a Practitioner, but could certainly do work as a website  
testing consultant. I would need to know what kind of help would be  
appropriate in that area.


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