In most scenarios, a lot of time is useless and taken by the human
inaction or slowness.
This optimizer tries to increase the scenario speed by removing this
wasted time. Stabilization is required before shots.
Note that animated tests such as label_slide cannot be optimized well.
The reason is that a stabilization is done at the beginning of the test,
resulting in an endless loop (slide always moving).
One of the biggest issue in Exactness is related to the system
configuration differences. Among them, the fonts can for example
impact on the height of the widgets.
The solution to not be dependent on the fonts consist in using embedded
fonts and to force their usage when playing the applications.
The -f option has been added to the player and the recorder so the user
can provide the path to a fonts directory. This option must be set in
order to force the fonts replacement. Since tests shots can use different
fonts, the exu file stores the version of fonts that have been used.
This is why it is needed to have in the provided directory different
directories, each pointing to a different version of the fonts. For
example, some old tests can use fonts of 2017 (e.g directory 20170101)
while new tests will use new fonts (20180601). Check the
exactness-elm-data repository (fonts branch) for a better understanding.
During recording, the -f option will apply the indicated fonts on the
launched application and will record the mouse events accordingly. The
fonts datestamp is stored in the exu output.
During playing, the fonts will be loaded by reading the exu fonts path,
and then the application is launched. If no information is provided in
the exu but -f is used, the tool will load the most recent fonts (by
comparing the datestamp directories).
The exu doesn't contain the old scenario entries (Variant_st) but the new
(Exactness_Action).
The recorder doesn't create old rec file but only exu.
The player/inspector support rec files by converting them to the new
format internally.
The structures have been tried to be simpler.
The exu is a EET file for Exactness (Exactness Unit). It currently
contains the scenario and the images shots.
exactness_inspect supports it, as well as the player (only as output).
Daniel Zaoui