Arquillian and GWT

[csa]

Hi everyone,

At the developer conference in Brno back in February we have discussed possible use cases for an Arquillan GWT extension. The main use cases we came up with were:

1. Mixing GWT client-side and standard in-container tests in the same test class. So basically making sure only a subset of the test methods gets compiled to JavaScript.

2. Making the GWT integration tests use an Arquillian managed container instead of the built-in (embedded) Jetty.

I am happy to announce that I found a way to make these use cases work now.

Here's an example test mixing a client-side GWT test and a standard in-container test in the same test class:

[https://github.com/csadilek/arquillian-extension-gwt/blob/master/src/test/java/org/jboss/arquillian/gwt/client/test/GreeterTest.java]

Here's a similiar example test involving a GWT RPC to a managed container (e.g. JBoss AS 7):

[https://github.com/csadilek/arquillian-extension-gwt/blob/master/src/test/java/org/jboss/arquillian/gwt/client/test/GreeterRpcTest.java]

This is only a working prototype right now and I need more feedback and help to continue. To make this work I had to change a lot of GWT internals e.g. I needed to customize the GWT JDTCompiler to ignore @Deployment methods since they won't translate to JS :). Ideally, I'd like to see the method exclusion feature in the upstream GWT compiler together with other changes I had to make but I still need to formalize and abstract this features more before I can suggest them.

If you're interested, please play around with it and let us know what you think.

Cheers,

Christian

[csa]

P.S. The project I linked to is configured to run the tests in managed JBoss AS 7. So, if you try running them you will have to specify a jbossHome env. variable or pass it to the VM using -DjbossHome=/path/to/awesome

P.P.S We're also interested in alternative use cases or new implementation approaches...anything really .

[aslak]

Nice work!

When ready.. I've created a upstream Arquillian GWT Extension repo under the Arquillian org: https://github.com/arquillian/arquillian-extension-gwt

Also added a "Extension -. GWT" component and a "gwt_1.0.0.next" version in JIRA: https://issues.jboss.org/browse/ARQ/component/12316141

A good place to collect all new ideas and issues

[csa]

Awesome, thanks!

[dbertini]

Hi,

   there are no more notice about testing GWT?

Thanks a Lot

D.B.

[csa]

Hi David,

Well, we do have a working prototype (see links above) but haven't received any feedback so far.

The main reason I haven't worked on a beta release yet is that I had to override some GWT-internals to make this work. Packaging these overrides with the Arquillian-GWT extension could lead to a number of compatibility issues. I am hoping to contribute some of this changes to a future GWT version.

In any case, your feedback/ideas are very welcome!

Cheers,

Christian

[aslak]

@christian your gwt work is in high demand.. http://www.freelancer.com/projects/Java/Implement-custom-arquillian-launcher-for.html

[csa]

Interesting . It doesn't look like we will be getting the required features (e.g. method exclusion) into GWT anytime soon.

A similar feature has been requested in 2009: http://code.google.com/p/google-web-toolkit/issues/detail?id=3769

Here's my request/case: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/Google-Web-Toolkit/_1jnF4hawLw

So, if we want to release this, and assuming there's enough demand, we will either have to release it with the overridden GWT classes or with a forked version of GWT.

Maybe we should just do this to have a beta1 version out? Any thoughts?

[aslak]

Overridden how?

[csa]

Right now: By adding the sources of the corresponding classes to the Arquillian GWT extension and modifying them e.g. https://github.com/csadilek/arquillian-extension-gwt/tree/master/src/main/java/com/google/gwt/dev/javac

They are Apache 2 licensed.

[aslak]

right.. with ASL 2 that's an option.

[oranheim]

Your patch was merged with gwt trunk on March 25 (r11570). It didn't make it for ver 2.5.1 released on March 11.

Now it only requires gwt snapshot builds to try out the arq-ext-gwt