Rails test runner
Summary
This is a simple rails application that allows remote execution of Ruby/Watir scripts. The scripts are expected to use test/unit (or otherwise provide meaningful console output).
The rails app runs on the client that will actually execute the tests; when a user accesses the application URL remotely, they should see a page containing the list of scripts available to run.
Clicking on a script's name will start execution, and the console output of the test script is displayed in the browser.
Installation and usage
Note that this app does not use or expect a database, so there's no need to set one up during install.
Install steps:
- On the client that will run the tests, install rails with 'gem install rails'
- Download runner.zip from the link below, and extract it in any dir on the client.
- Go into the extracted 'runner' dir and execute 'runner_start.bat'
- From either the local or a remote machine, open a browser and access http://HOST:3000

(where HOST is your machine's address)
- Attempt to run the google test suite.
- If that works, place your own scripts into runner/data/suites/ and try to run them using the application.
A special note on running more than one test concurrently:
It is possible to execute more than one test script at the same time using this runner. However, this can result in problems when running Watir scripts against a target site that uses authentication, especially cookie-based authentication.
The most common problem appears when a Watir-driven browser accesses a site, and expects an authentication prompt - but if another browser is already open and authenticated with the target site, the second browser may reuse the credentials of the first browser. This might be because IE instances invoked using OLE automation (which Watir makes use of) appear to share the cookie state of any other IE instances open at the same time. This type of behavior is usually not seen in IE instances started manually.
Download
Bill, Thank you very much for posting this test runner. It is great to finally have a way for developers who don't have Watir & Ruby installed on their machines to be able to run test and view the results remotely!