Howto install Chrome, Cucumber, Capybara and Selenium.

Afterwards we run a simple example test against the Chrome browser.

Install a fresh virtual machine with Ubuntu 11.10.
Make sure you install all the updates, this is needed for the latest Chrome version.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
reboot

sudo apt-get install ruby
sudo apt-get install rubygems
sudo apt-get install libxml2-dev
sudo apt-get install libxslt1-dev
sudo apt-get install openjdk-6-jre

sudo gem install rubygems-update
sudo update_rubygems

sudo gem install rspec
sudo gem install cucumber (gives error on builder documentation, ignore)
sudo gem install capybara

install the latest version of Chrome
download the latest chromedriver

• extract chromedriver from zipfile
• sudo cp chromedriver /usr/bin

download latest selenium-server

• start the selenium-server “java -jar selenium-yourversion.jar”

download my example feature file Example.zip

• unzip my example.zip
• start cucumber from the Example directory

See my short screencast for how it should work out:

The whole process should take you about 40 minutes to a hour, depending on your computer and internet speeds.

In Netbeans the default shortcut key to run tests for the current file is CTRL+F6. For some odd reason this wasn’t working on my recently installed Linux Mint Xfce operating system…?!?

At first i thought maybe its just broken in Netbeans. But now it seems that the window manager (xfwm4) of Xfce uses CTRL+F# to switch workspaces. After some searching I figured out howto disable this feature. Look for it under the shortcut settings of the window manager and not at the keyboard or workspaces settings. Doh!

Back to my Test-Driven Development training examples…

Games, I like playing games. The thing is most games are only for Windows. Everyone knows Microsoft created a unfair advantage over other computer operating system providers in the 90′s. They are a trailed and accused monopolist, but time is changing and other platforms are gaining momentum. So, why aren’t most games being developed cross-platform? Does the gaming industry really think there isn’t any money in the other 6-7% computer platforms? Maybe they are right, but this really going to stay a chicken or the egg problem. If nobody develops the games for the other platforms then they wont grow as a gaming platform at all. Keeping me stuck on Windows.

This got me thinking, how are the game console developers handling this? They have to program games for at least three different consoles. Wii, PS3 and Xbox. Those don’t share a lot in the architecture department, meaning they need to be programmed differently. You’d figure company’s like Electronic Arts have to know how to create cross platform games. Take a look at their Need for Speed product page and see which platforms its supports: iPhone, Wii, PS2, PS3, Xbox 360, PC, Nintendo DS, PSP. Why is Mac OS X and Linux missing? How hard can it be to support another two major platforms? Makes me think, is Microsoft telling them not too? Lets not get too paranoid…

Come on gaming industry lets get Mac OS X and Linux into the mix! If a Indy gaming house like Guild Software can develop a game (Vendetta Online) for three platforms, why aren’t the big boys doing this then?

But there is also some good news. Valve recently announced Steam is also going to support the Mac platform. Also Blizzard has a good reputation of supporting the Mac OS X platform. So some are heading into the right direction although Linux could use some more love.

A lot of people are daily using Macs and Linux for both work and entertainment, but for gaming most of the time they need to switch to Windows. Windows is still the biggest gaming platform. I don’t understand why the gaming industry keeps betting on one player. They are helping Microsoft to stay the biggest player in the market. Don’t they know Microsoft is a competitor of them in the gaming field? Fools i tell you, just plain fools…