Raible Designs

Aren't out-of-container tests supposed to be faster?

Earlier this week, I converted my StrutsTestCase tests from using CactusStrutsTestCase to MockStrutsTestCase. At first, this seemed like a great thing - on my Windows XP box. To run all the tests in AppFuse, it takes around 2:20. I know, this is quite a bit of time for unit tests - but it was 3:15 in version 1.5. At least it's faster than it was. 1:20 of this is for starting Tomcat and running Canoo WebTests.

This all seemed great until I ran "ant test-all" on my PowerBook tonight. It averages around 7:00 minutes. WFT?! I know PowerBooks are slow - but they're not that slow. I'm guessing the reason is because Spring's ApplicationContext is loaded by each test - whereas the Cactus versions would always grab it out of the ServletContext. Sounds like I need a TestSuite.

What if I isolate and compare times for just the "test-web" target? This target runs all the Action, Filter and Listener tests. Time to execute on Windows: 33 seconds, PowerBook: 2 minutes 21 seconds. What about just testing the JSPs (with Cargo)? Windows: 1:24, PowerBook: 3:32. My Windows desktop has 1.5 GB RAM and a 2.6 GHz processor. My PowerBook has 1 GB RAM and 1.5 GHz. I agree that it seems like an unfair comparison - but AppFuse tests ran in around 4 minutes on the PowerBook in the last release. I guess it's back to the drawing board.

Update: Nevermind. I just downloaded and checked out AppFuse 1.5 - almost 8 minutes for running all the tests. If I were going to work on my PowerBook for my next project, I'd refactor AppFuse Managers and Actions to use jMock. Luckily I'm using my Windows machine.

Update 2: I found a solution! Using Ant 1.6.2's forkmode="once", I was able to reduce the time of the test-web target from 2:21 to 24 seconds on my PowerBook!! Windows: :33 -> :18. Running "ant test-all" on the Mac is now 2:15 - while the Windows version is 2:20.

WTF!? My PowerBook is actually faster than my Windows box? I never thought I'd see the day - Yeeee haaawwww!!

Now I just have to figure out how to detect 1.6.2 and warn users if they aren't using it.

Resin now Open Source?

I noticed on the release notes for Resin 3.0.9 (released last Saturday) that they now have an open source (GPL) version.

Resin Open Source (GPL) - Contains all functional components of Resin, including EJB, but excludes performance and clustering capabilities.

Excludes performance capabilities? What does that mean - is it slow on purpose?

I was planning on looking at AppFuse on Resin again tonight and hopefully figure out a way to make it easy to setup/test/deploy on Resin instead of Tomcat. Since AppFuse currently works fine on Resin, this shouldn't be too hard. The hard part is going to be finding a non-obtrusive way to setup Resin.

With Tomcat, I can copy a couple JARs to $CATALINA_HOME/common/lib and an appfuse.xml file to $CATALINA_HOME/conf/Catalina/localhost and the app is setup and ready to go. Better yet, I can use Tomcat's Ant tasks to deploy a WAR with an embedded context.xml file and it'll get copied to the appropriate location.

Is there a similar system that Resin allows? I know I can do the copy-JAR thing. However, the last time I checked, you had to manually edit the resin.conf file to import a <web-app> definition.

Laszlo Goes Open Source

It's awesome to see that Laszlo has gone open source. The main reason I haven't dug into Macromedia's Flex is because it's $12K per CPU. I agree that this it's probably worth it if you're after a nice user experience - but most of my clients want open source, and only open source. It's tough to find folks that'll pay for JIRA even - if you can believe that.

With Lazlo going open source, it opens a whole new world for me. Now there's an opportunity to use this technology with clients. Of course, now I have learn the stuff so I can be productive enough to convince them to use it. I may even add a Lazlo front-end to AppFuse, but probably not until next year, after Tapestry and JSF. Hmmm, if JSF is really all that - can it render a Laszlo UI? That'd be wicked.