So in this post, i am going to mention about all issues i faced in setting up a tinderbox and steps to fix them.

Yeah before you start reading this
http://sp2hari.blogspot.com/2007/06/conquered-solaris.html and
http://sp2hari.blogspot.com/2007/06/tinderbox.html has instructions about how to setup Tinderbox in Solaris environment.

Ok the first error i got was

Finally i got an error saying,

gmake[3]: Leaving directory `/export/home/hari/tinderbox

hari@home:~$/usr/openwin/bin/xhost +
access control disabled, clients can connect from any host

Few other things to note while trying to compile firefox under tinderbox are
1. Never ever run two instances of tinderbox at the same time. Make sure the first one is killed before starting a new one.
2. Delete the SunOS_5.11_Depend folder when you are facing any compilation errors.
3. Use -XO3 for CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS
4. Make sure your mozconfig file has these lines
ac_add_options –disable-freetype2
ac_add_options –disable-debug
ac_add_options –disable-tests

The scripts can be downloaded from here.

Things to be modified when you run your script in your environment are.
1. In the file firefox.xml, change the value of <filepath> for so that it points the file called index.html in the folder called data in your scripts directory.

Let me give a detailed HOW TO for running these scripts.

1. First, LDTP must be installed in your system.
The CVS page in ldtp.freedesktop.org provides the instructions for getting the LDTP code through CVS.

Note : I had a small issue compiling the code which i got from CVS.
While using ./configure it gave me an error saying

./configure: line 3998: syntax error near unexpected token `LIBXML2,’
./configure: line 3998: `PKG_CHECK_MODULES(LIBXML2, libxml-2.0 >= 2.0.0)’

The above error is because autoconf and pkg-conf are installed at two different locations. For more details check http://lists.freedesktop.org/pipermail/xserver/2003-December/000573.html

So i used this package which compiled without any issue :).
For more details on how to install, check here.

2. Enable Accessibility from gnome-control-center

3. Download and start Firefox3.0a*pre from here ( Any FF3.0 alpha release should work, though with FF3.0a8pre, it is tested throughly.
Note :: When you start firefox, make sure you don’t have any other instance of firefox running.

4.Run the command

hari@home:~/soc/tinderbox$ ldtprunner run.xml

If you have set LDTP_DEBUG=1 in your shell, then it will show lots of output. Don’t get scared. It only means things are working fine :)
Note :: You can also work with LDTP_DEBUG unset, if you want a “clean” output.

Once that command is executed, then it will run the test cases provided in the run.xml.

A file called log.xml gives the details about the test cases run. The last three lines in the log file should be like this if the test case ran properly for all the 30 test cases provided.

<groupsstatus total=”30″ pass=”30″ fail=”0″/>
</group>
</ldtp>

The screen record video on Solaris 11 is given can be viewed from here.
http://download.freedesktop.org/ldtp/movies/screen2.html

The current status of the test cases can be viewed from here.
http://ldtp.freedesktop.org/wiki/Firefox_Test_Cases

A line in /etc/nsswitch.conf will be as follows
hosts: files
Change that line to
hosts: files dns
This will make sure that first /etc/hosts and then dns entires are looked during networking.

The mail from Emily had the following details with this attachment.

As such i had three main things to do in Solaris according to the mail Emily Chen sent me. They are

1. Read about tinderbox setup from http://www.mozilla.org/projects/tinderbox/ .

2. Sun Studio 11
http://developers.sun.com/sunstudio/products/previous/11/index.jsp
On Solaris, Sun Studio is used to build Firefox, not gcc, so have to install Sun Studio.

3. Set up CBE (Common Build Environment)
http://opensolaris.org/os/project/jds/contributing/building/

I installed Solaris (Neveda ) two weeks back and it was good. :-) . Though i was a bit scared in the initial stages, i didn’t find much difference between Linux and Solaris as far as LDTP is concerned. Anyway i had Emily Chen from Sun China (my Soc Mentor ) to help me with the issues and many thanks to her, she was always willing to help me in any issue. In fact almost all her mails had something saying
” I am on Gtalk almost every workday, feel free to ping me when you have problems. ” or something similar to that :-) :-)

But there was one issue which really troubled me in Solaris and that was DNS wasn’t working. Instead of typing http://www.google.com, i had to type http://64.233.187.99/ :(

I had a huge list of servers which i might use and their ip’s . (Many thanks to dnsstuff.com). I was getting more and more frust typing IP’s instead of url’s and browsing only the cached page instead of the actual pages. I tried many a things and even Emily also helped me with few tips and tricks. But things never worked. I was really getting irritated as this was delaying my progress in SOC.

Determined to solve the issue somehow, i started trying all the options in the Network Settings. One strange thing i noted is that, whenever i add a DNS server and close it, next time i open Network Settings, the entries won’t be there. Simply disappeared from there :-(.

I noticed an option called Location in the Network Settings. It was empty and i wasn’t sure whether i have seen anything like this in Linux.

Not sure of what to do with that Location, i gave “home” there. I wasn’t sure whether this will solve my problem, but no harm in trying. But once i restarted network, www.google.com worked.
YES. IT WORKED. IT WORKED .IT WORKED. IT WORKED .IT WORKED. IT WORKED

I am pretty sure anyone who had seen me at that time would have thought that i am mad. Even i wont blame them . I accept, suddenly jumping out of the chair and shouting “IT WORKED” at 3 in the morning is quite odd. :P

Anyways, now that things have started working, will be saying my “Hello World” to tinderbox soon :-)

There is a wiki page in LDTP website which gives quick tips about how to run LDTP test cases.

First quick steps to get LDTP installed . If you have LDTP already installed, then you can skip this.

Installation
Get the source/binary from the downloads section of LDTP web page. Any other dependencies which LDTP might need while installation is libxml2 and libat-spi. (I generally install the debug and dev packages of the above two). After this installation of LDTP shouldn’t have any issues :-)

Runner XML
Runner XML files makes testing many test cases one after another in a batch mode easy. A sample runner XML can be found here. A very simple runner XML needed to run a single test case will be like

<ldtp>
<logfileoverwrite>1</logfileoverwrite>
<logfile>log.xml</logfile>
<group>
<script>
<name>verifyaddress-autocomplete.py</name>
<data>firefox.xml</data>
</script>
</group>
</ldtp>

The tags are self explanatory.
You can have any number of script blocks and thereby test any number of test cases one after another. The data tag is not necessary but it is better to have a separate data file.

Test
Well, that’s all you have to do. Start Firefox and then

hari@home:~$ ldtprunner run.xml

The above command starts testing the application with the test case provided in the run.xml .

Note :: It is also possible to test simply by giving

hari@home:~$ python verifyaddress-autocomplete.py

But i prefer doing it using runner XML, as that has more features.

There is a complete tutorial for LDTP here. This explains everything needed to write a test script clearly and is worth reading :)

So i have started with Automation of Firefox.
For the current status of all the test cases i have mentioned here, check this link

The categories under which i have written test cases till now are
1. Firefox 3.0 :: SmokeTests :: Functionality
Most of the test cases in this category are done. certain test cases which are yet to be done are marked as TODO in the status page.

2. Firefox 2.0 :: Basic Functional Tests :: Help
This is a really small category, with just two cases. Both of them working fine, but have to check the closewindow() function which didn’t close the help window.

3. Firefox 2.0 :: Basic Functional Tests :: Options (Preferences)
Have done almost all the test cases. There is again a small issue in this. The objects shown in the preferences window are list-items whose parent is a list. We tried to copy the code for combobox for list but it didn’t work. Have to add functions specific for list in list.c

4. Firefox 2.0 :: Basic Functional Tests :: Printing
This had bug in the print preview option. The CPU just hangs and processor takes 100% load . This bug is already reported in bugzilla.mozilla.org .

5. Firefox 2.0 :: Basic Functional Tests :: Location bar
Works perfectly. Had to use LTFX functions activatewin and typekey .

6. Firefox 2.0 :: Basic Functional Tests :: Popup and Annoyance Blocking
Most of the test cases have been automated. Testing Java and Javascript is a small issue in this.

Some of the important categories which i have started tesing and is in near completion are
1. Bookmarks
2. MenuBar
3. RSS
4. Downloading
5. Addons Manager

Finally, the code for the above tests can be found here.
Finally one small and interesting thing ;-). The icon which shows that the loading of a page ( the circular thing which rotates while a page is loading) is a push button :-) . Was really surprised when i noticed it :P. No clue why is it that way ;)

When i started working for my SoC, i got a mail from Google SoC team saying
“Hello everyone,

In keeping with last year’s tradition, we will be sending a surprise
to all students. Last year we sent a cool Google notebook (complete
with paper legacy interface), and this year we have something even
cooler in the works.

If you really feel you must, go ahead and start a barrage of “I wonder
what it could be” posts to the list. But please don’t. You’ll have
the ultra-cool surprise in hand soon.

One final reminder, when you get your surprise, please don’t tell the
rest of the world until June 4, 2007. We’d like to keep it a surprise
for as many folks as possible.

After that, by all means blog, post, etc. :)

Cheers,
LH “

The moment someone tells you that you are going to get a surprise, you start thinking only about it and nothing else. :-) . And of course i am no exception. All i knew was it is a book signed by its author. There is long discussion in the Google soc group guessing whether it can be Linus or someone else.

Finally i got the book few days back. It is Producing Open Source Software: How to Run a Successful Free Software Project by karl fogel.

Wow :) i never thought just a book will make me so happy. This is the first book i have ever got which is signed by its author :) and i felt so happy that i can’t describe it here :-)

I really can’t wait to get back to college so that i can scan the first page ;-) and put it up here. Man, just a simple signature with a text saying “Happy Hacking” but whenever i see it ,makes me feel happy and proud :-).

And yes, the best part was that the author was kind enough to post a blog about it. So if you don’t believe what i am telling you, check out his blog about the book here.

The review about the book in one line. “The more i read it, the more i love it.” There are many places where the author has taken care to give appropriate examples, funny incidents, etc.

Finally
Thanks a ton for Google for such a nice idea. :-)