The Linux Desktop Testing Project reaches the 1.0.0 release [LWN.net]

By Forrest Cook
February 26, 2008

The Linux Desktop Testing Project is a cross-UNIX GUI testing framework. The project was started in 2005. In the Linux world, LDTP originally just supported the GNOME desktop environment. KDE support was planned from the beginning, this capability is now in place with the recently released KDE 4.0. In addition to operating with the two major Linux desktops, LDTP is being used by Mozilla and OpenOffice.org. From the LDTP home page:

Linux Desktop (GUI Application) Testing Project (LDTP) is aimed at producing high quality test automation framework and cutting-edge tools that can be used to test Linux Desktop and improve it. It uses the Accessibility libraries to poke through the application's user interface. The framework also has tools to record test-cases based on user-selection on the application. LDTP is a Linux / Unix GUI application testing tool. It runs on Linux / Solaris / FreeBSD / Embedded environment (Palm source).

Version 0.8 of LDTP was investigated last February on LWN, take a look to get an overview of the software's operation. LDTP version 0.9.0 was released in August 2007, it featured new Firefox automation support and bug fixes. This week, version 1.0.0 was announced:

This release features number of important breakthroughs in LDTP as well as in the field of Test Automation. This release note covers a brief introduction on LDTP followed by the list of new features and major bug fixes which makes this new version of LDTP the best of the breed. Useful references have been included at the end of this article for those who wish to hack / use LDTP.

New features in this release include the Object Oriented LDTP, the LDTP Editor with record and replay functionality, major bug fixes and lots of work on the documentation. The Linux Desktop Testing Project is maturing and its scope is getting wider.

LDTP can become an important tool for automated testing of GUI-based applications. With a bit of effort on the part of developers, LDTP can improve the quality of applications and speed up the testing of new releases.

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