Debugging options /Dronekit outside of Mavproxy - dronekit-python

I would be very interested to know more about running Dronekit outside of Mavproxy. I'm developing a large app at the moment, which is mostly decision making logic and 'health' checking of the flight. Debugging is fairly important, and is difficult to do in Mavproxy/Dronekit.
Running Dronekit independently of Mavproxy would allow for easier debugging through IDEs like PyCharm. At the moment, I'm using pymavlink instead of Dronekit for this reason. I would love to switch, so it would be nice to hear thoughts and time frames for future plans.
A second question: can you share any insights or methods used for debugging in the current version of Dronekit?

You can debug using pdb, which allows you to create breakpoints etc.
The documentation has now been updated with a debugging guide which covers the topic "state of play".

Related

Appium GUI-test for WPF, how to get it working on Azure?

I have 2 simple GUI-test on a WPF application. They work alright from VisualStudio.
Now I am trying to also do that in my Azure pipeline. Ik keep on bumping against the same error right at the start:
"OpenQA.Selenium.WebDriverException: An element could not be located on the page using the given search parameters"
Basically I am working along this line: WinAppDriver in CI with Azure Pipelines. One difference with the example is that I have put my tests in my build pipeline instead of my release pipeline. As far as I can determine that should not be the cause of my problem, using the same Windows-2019 agent.
This is how the pipeline looks like, up to the tests:
In the past I have had problems from VisualStudio similar to those decribed here, but I have left those behind. FindElementByName - Element couldn't be located
Nevertheless I have tried to improve on these aspects by using DefaultWait. It works fine from VisualStudio but has not helped me on Azure.
I read a couple of times about an 'interactive mode' for the agent. But I don't see anything about that in the guideline, and it seems to apply to self hosted agents. I also don't see any configuration option on the standard agent. So I am confused about that.
I am lost here.
Could someone tell me what I am missing?
It would be much appreciated, I have been spending quite some time on this already.
This took me a while to find the necessary information and piece together the solution, which turned out to work.
The key thing is using an interactive agent, which has to be self hosted. Key instruction for me was following Self-hosted Windows agents. This resulted in installing an environment on my own hardware, and to be pretty simple and straight forward.
This implies one has to startup this environment with Powershell, and probably guard the graphical test as it executes. For an one man team as mine that is no problem, for a larger team this may be an issue.
An additional advantage is that the entire building and execution environment is now under one's own control for overview and inspection.
It's funny to push a commit and see the pipeline progress on Azure, plus starting up the graphical test on my own hardware.

Is the Meanstack suitable for production?

I have been looking at the various Meanstack frameworks out on the net - and whilst impressed with what they achieve I have one serious concern - the number of files used in a typical stack - meanstack.js uses over 15000 files whilst the bmean example has a modest 1900 in comparison.
The question I am asking myself is would I be happy to put my trust is such a system from a production view point - what happens when something goes wrong how easy is it going to be to find the answer? You can almost bet that when your most important customer logs on it is going to go haywire. Also what happens when Angular version 2 comes along it could require a complete rewrite but by then the stack your using has been customised and difficult to change?
Am I getting over concerned about the technology - my intended approach is to strip the client side code out of the bmean example and rewrite it with my own - at least that way I know (and control) what goes on in the client. Do you think this is the correct way to proceed?
With most systems there is a bit of preparation required before going to production. The same is true with mean.io (using multiple cpu's, improved aggregation, caching, etc etc)
The large number of files is essentially a product of the way npm handles dependencies. Each module is able to define independent versions of the same dependencies thus creating a bit of bloat but at the same time allowing a lot of flexability in nodejs code.
We currently have a number of mean.io projects in production phase and have been very happy with performance and the overall experience.
New releases of the project are scheduled every couple of months, upgrading should not be too much of a problem if you use the package system correctly.
Issues with the project are handled and managed through github issues additional support can be found on our irc (freenode #mean_io) channel as well as on facebook.
For commercial support have a look at the support page

I want to write an app to get a PBS cluster status updates, which platform would be easiest to learn?

Direct Question: I have a clear problem in mind -- I have a PBS cluster running Ubuntu -- I know C/C++ very well. I want to write a mobile application capable of querying the status of my cluster. I will most likely have to learn another language to develop a mobile application.
Which platform should I choose: Android, iOS, Blackberry, or something else? What is the easiest platform to pick up?
Note: my contract is about up on my phone so I'm willing to switch to whichever platform is the easiest to learn.
Background: In about a month I'm going to start burning the candle at both ends to develop server side stuff - mostly written in Perl and/or PHP. Let's assume I'll serve most of the data as HTML and RSS, but also allow authenticated queries to get job status, error reports, etc.
I have a hunch that Java is probably the best way to go, and I'm already comfortable with the eclipse IDE. But I really don't know where to start in terms of a platform. I tried to land an Android book or two from the local Borders before they closed, but I've been so busy I didn't get there before they were gone.
Any thoughts are welcome.
I'd happily relocate this question if it's more appropriate somewhere else?
Since you know c and c++, and if you own a mac and the $100 cost of getting the platform is not an issue, then I would go with objective-C and develop an Iphone app since it is very similar to C and C++ and should be very easy to pick up. If the things I mentioned are issue tho, then I would develop an android app, and Java is not that hard to learn either. Good Luck!

Simple standalone website checking tool

Background:
We run a content management platform that hosts 20+ separate websites - some intranets and some internet sites - so that have different end points routed for internal or external access.
We are currently upgrading our infrastructure - including software versions, hardware, changes of IP/VIP/DNS entries etc which affects all of the sites.
I want to be able to run a repeatable site test against all sites check everything is working fine and I'd like to do it from different end points (locally on each box in the cluster, from the cluster level, from the internet, from the intranet extra.
Anyone know of a simple tool that requires no sofware to install to run a repeatable regression test against a whole bunch of defined URL's?
I was thinking of a HTML page that I can run from different locations that is essentially a link checker.
Can anyone recommend a simple way to provide a level of automatic testing of our sites (in addition to our manual verification.
Thanks
Sounds like you're looking for Selenium: http://seleniumhq.org/
Edit
Wait, I think you mean 'Testing' them as in, check to see if they're online and reachable? Then I might just automate a series of ping or telnet commands, and check appropriate things. Would take a matter of minutes to write a little app in any language to do this.
There is all sorts of web site monitoring software available (check google, or ask for recos here). That's what you're looking for. There is a whole range from free to very expensive that monitor and stress your site from around the world.
Or you can write simple shell scripts that do what you want.
>> 'Testing' them as in, check to see if they're online and reachable?
Yes that's exactly it!! I was thinking the same - I could script something up but I thought I'd check first to see if someone has already done this - I guess not!
Thanks
Doesn't fit the "requires no sofware to install to run" part, and it's not necessarily super-cheap, but we've had great results with Radar Website Monitor for this kind of thing.

Windows Forms Test Automation

We are looking for a way to automate windows forms for acceptance testing. Our requirements are:
Must be usable by non-developers (ie: people with no development environment installed)
Must have a recorder
Must support third-party controls
Must have basic functionality (allow clicking on buttons, inputing text, validating results, accros multiple windows if necessary)
Basically, something like Selenium, but for windows forms.
For what it's worth, I've been testing for 15 years, and to this day have never seen ROI on tests created in this fashion. Automated testing, is obviously a good thing, but if you are just taking test cases that should be manual test cases and having minimum wage workers "automate" them, you will almost always end up with a mass of unmaintainable fragile tests that save no time in the end and get thrown out quickly.
The FitNesse suggestion from paiNie is a great suggestion.
Must be usable by non-developers
Any not-web test automation tool will need either dev`s well-known ide (Eclipse etc.) or test tool ide. SilkTest, TestComplete etc. will also make u to write some code.
U can separate work between devs and testers using tool for creating "executable requirements" like "Fitnesse" or Concordion
AutomatedQA TestComplete meets your requirements AFAIK
HP QuickTest Pro is a good tool, even for non-developers
Posting this on behalf of my wife :)
We were using a tool from Compuware called TestPartner to create the test scripts for testing a WinForms client-server application. For managing and controlling the scripts execution we were using Compuware QA Director.
TestPartner uses VBA which is quite easy to understand and to use. Some non-developers could even know it because they write Excel macros.
It has good record-and-replay functionality and is very good with objects recognition.
So you could use it for both simple scripts created by your business users and to create a framework of advanced scripts by your developers and test engineers.
Never used it but Borland SilkTest seems to be another meeting your requirements.
Basically, something like Selenium, but for windows forms.
You could try AutoIt. It's free and has a community site where you could find already created solutions.
However I'm generally concerned about your goal. Acceptance criteria are informal.
Have you got already ideas how would you be translating informal stuff to technical requirements?
We use TestComplete for automating our Windows forms test cases. It is a pretty good product overall.
The main issue you will run into is that while most of these products will meet all of your requirements, you are going to run into a lot of maintenance issues, especially having non-developers recording the tests.
Although it may seem like a good idea to quickly record all of your tests then have them run from the recordings, you will have a much better ROI by actually treating your automated tests like regular development. Recordings will leave you with a lot of duplicated code, which is very difficult to maintain. By properly designing the tests and breaking out reusable code you will end up with much more stable tests and you will be able to get your results much quicker.
The Vermont HighTest:
http://www.vtsoft.com/vcsproducts/index.html
The 30 day trial looked pretty good!
Check out Oracle/Empirix e-Test.
Check the perfect solution. TestComplete is a great tool for record and play and creating your own scripts using VB, C#, C++ or anything else you want. It beats Silk, Compuware, Mercury hands down. It has very low price per license. You can get 5 license for price of 1 license in Compuware and silk, and 1/4 license for price Mercury.
You can try Sikuli. It's free and easy. No programming skills needed.

Resources