Managing Multiple Test Kits

Toolkit can manage multiple Test Kits

What is a Test Kit?

A Test Kit is a collection of tests managed by Toolkit. The internal or primary test kit is found inside the WAR file at toolkitx/testkit. Inside the test kit directory is a sub-directory named tests and within in that there is a directory for each test. The test id is used to name the directory.

Why have multiple Test Kits?

Two reasons. First so you can develop and maintain your own local tests. If you have local tests you don't want to loose them when you update the Toolkit installation.

Second is to support Test Kit reconfiguration which is altering the codes used in the tests to match a local Affinity Domain design. This is covered in Configuring Test Kits.

How does Toolkit choose Test Kit

When multiple Test Kits exist Toolkit must choose which one to use. This is organized as a Test Search Path. If you are familiar with the PATH feature in Unix or Linux shells it is the same. Multiple Test Kits exist and they are searched in a pre-defined order to find a test.

Test Search Path

The Test Search Path is tied to the Environment and Test Session features of Toolkit. Alternate Test Kits are stored in the External Cache inside the Environment definition indexed by the Test Session. Selecting your Environment and Test Session specifies your Test Search Path. There can be up to three Test Kits on your Test Search Path.

In the External Cache is a directory named

environment/

Each Environment defined is a directory under environment. By default Toolkit creates and uses the default Environment

environment/default/

If this Environment defines local Test Kits then there is a directory testkits

environment/default/testkits/

The next part of the specification relies on the selection of Test Session. The default Test Session is named default. If the default Test Session within the default Environment has a Test Kit then it is located at

environment/default/testkits/default/

The first default is the Environment and the second default is the Test Session. This applies to Environments and Test Sessions with other names as well.

Within the Test Kit is a directory tests. So a locally defined test named MyTest in the default Environment and the default Test Session would be found at

environment/default/testkits/default/MyTest/

Within Toolkit there is always a default Environment and a default Test Session. They are created when Toolkit initializes.

The only Test Kit has has to exist is the one internal to Toolkit but there can be up to three in the search path as follows. Here the name current indicates your current Environment or Test Session.

1. Environment = current, Test Session = current
2. Environment = current, Test Session = default
3. Internal

The second entry should be thought of a follows. All users of the current Environment get access to this Test Kit. They can refine their test choices by having a Test Kit local to their Test Session.

The second entry is used by the automated tooling that will reconfigure a test kit for this Environment as define in Configuring Test Kits.

How to create a Test Kit

There are two ways. Use the automation defined in Configuring Test Kits which builds a copy of the internal Test Kit reconfigured for the codes defined in the selected Environment or build it yourself using file system tools on your machine.