Get help with testing, discuss unit testing strategies etc.


Post by jminutella »

Hi all,

After months of setting up and playing with Siesta along with a little bit of learning curve, I'm really enjoying the product. I was just wondering what the roadmap looked like for Siesta and when the next release would be.

Cheers!

Post by nickolay »

Hi,

Thanks for the feedback! Its always pleasant to know that your code is useful for someone else.

We currently consider Siesta 5 to be feature-full and stable, it solves all tasks it is supposed to. There will be no major additions to the 5 version, only maintenance.

The way forward will be Siesta 6, which is going to be a new product, rewritten from scratch. Rewriting (and breaking backward compatibility) is a hard decision, but its time. Siesta's code originates from the ancient pre-node.js times of JavaScript history, (seen https://www.openjsan.org/ ?) and it becomes more and more complex to make changes in the codebase. Web evolves very rapidly and Siesta needs to catch up with modern technologies.

So, the preliminary plan for Siesta 6:

- Open-source the core (Siesta Lite, which is already free currently) to broaden the adoption. Most of the extra cool things will remain in the paid version however.
- Drop support for legacy browsers (no IE). Only modern ones. Siesta 6 will be optimized for the future, not the past.
- Close the remaining functionality gap, which is running tests outside of the browser process (a-la "classic" selenium tests). This will make cross-page testing easier.
- Improve the parallellization granularity (should provide noticable speed up for small-mid size test suites)
- Remain ubiquios (node/browsers) and improve mobiles support.
- Make the new, cool UI (probably as Electron app). Running it as OS process will allow to launch browsers right from the UI (or inside the UI).
- Record the DOM changes during the test (so one can replay the test and see the DOM at the point of any assertion)

Technology-wise, its going to be:
- Ecma modules top to bottom
- TypeScript + mixins instead of legacy Joose class system (which served Siesta very well though)
- Puppeteer as a primary automation facility

Dating-wise - somewhere next year, currently no promises.

Siesta 5 is going to be still maintained of course.

Please feel free to provide a feedback on the feature set that is most important for you.

Post by jminutella »

Thank you so much for providing that in-depth outlook on Siesta's future. I'm glad Siesta is going to be prepped for the future. The Electron idea is very cool. The future is bright and I'm happy to see continued development efforts. Appreciate it!

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