Test automation don’ts #1 – Separate repositories

Since this is one of these days when frustration is at what feels like an all time high ‘again’ what better to do that to get it all out of you. When it comes to test automation there are so many poor decisions out there… yes, many. I’ll try to address some of these here. The first one out is, da-da.

#1 Do not keep automation code in a separate reposity

So what does it mean, consider the case where all test cases and test framework code is in a nicely well structured repository and the code to be tested resides in an equally professionally handled repository. But what happens when it is time to run test cases? Is the HEAD of these repositories/branches ‘always’ in synch, well most likely they are not, not even if the codebase is completely ‘branch free’. The end result, most likely broken tests that will cause a lot of waste.

So for the case where there is one repository for the product code, DO NOT put the automation code in a sperate repository or you’ll end up struggling with failing test cases as soon as the branches get out of synch. On top of this guess what kind of overhead you will face if a team/teams are working with a feature branch strategy, let me smile and mention that this is what I struggle with today broken tests all over the place and no one has a clue about which failing tests that are regressions and which ones are expected to fail?

I have seen the scenario with separate repositories at several places and the usual reason is that the system (under test) it self is spread out over multiple repositories and the aim was to keep the automated tests in one place supporting all parts of a ‘system’. Not even tests that are defined as end-2-end tests spanning a full system will handle the scenario smoothly. I have been involved in several approaches trying to resolve problems without putting the automation code in the same repository, none of the approaches have been fully successful.

Identified problems

• Test code out of synch with code under test
• TWICE the amount of branches to maintain and work with