March 2022 Summaries

The text discusses the importance of test automation skills in the era of agile development and continuous testing/delivery, highlighting its growing value and market demand. It also provides a list of comprehensive resources for learning test automation, covering various topics such as mobile testing, tooling, best practices, and techniques to help developers master automated mobile testing. The resources include articles, video tutorials, courses, and hands-on tutorials, catering to different skill levels and needs. Additionally, the text touches on specific areas of automated testing for Android apps, iOS apps, React Native apps, and general test optimization techniques, providing valuable insights and practical advice for developers looking to improve their mobile test automation skills.

Katie from Boston joined Bitrise as VP of Customer Experience after spending almost ten years with her previous company, which was acquired in 2019. She found a great fit at Bitrise by meeting with the management team and learning about the company's growth. Katie's role is crucial in ensuring customers' positive experiences with Bitrise, and she has learned that building relationships is key to success. To aspiring Bitrisers, Katie advises being eager, making connections, and staying open to new opportunities. She values driven and collaborative individuals who want to have an impact, and believes in learning through hands-on experience.

Tuist is a command line tool for creating, maintaining and interacting with Xcode projects, fully open source backed by an amazing community, written in Swift, and used by mobile teams at SoundCloud, Sky, Devengo, and many more. The new Verified Step partner allows developers to regain control of their projects by treating the filesystem and manifest file as a single source of truth and generating the Xcode project based on these. Installing Tuist is straightforward with a simple installation command, and it can be used to define all dependencies easily and consistently.

The mobile app has a significant impact on the company's total revenues, with 84% of respondents stating that it accounts for over half of their total revenue. However, most engineering teams do not allocate larger parts of their budget to their mobile app team, despite the importance of providing an immaculate mobile experience to users. Industry regulations and red tape can significantly slow down pushing out new features, particularly in companies where mobile revenue accounts for 75% or more of their total revenue. As a result, mobile product investment may not be prioritized in most teams, but it is essential to connect mobile excellence to business impact to drive growth.

fastlane is an open-source platform aimed at simplifying Android and iOS deployment, automating every aspect of development and release workflows in simple commands and lanes. It offers features such as automatic code signing for iOS, distributing beta builds with support for over 15 beta testing services, capturing screenshots automatically, and customizing deployment workflows using hundreds of community-built actions and plugins. fastlane supports Ruby versions 2.5 or newer and can be installed and configured on macOS using Homebrew or Bundler. The latest releases include improvements such as removing dependencies, adding new options, and fixing bugs, while also supporting integration with Bitrise for automated Steps and faster builds.

The Bitrise API is an essential tool for developers to build custom integrations with the platform, providing control over features and data. It allows users to fully customize Bitrise's functionality to fit their development pipelines. The API offers various endpoints, including authentication, app management, triggering builds, webhooks, iOS code signing, file storage, and more. To use the API, developers can generate personal access tokens, which are required for all endpoint calls except the root URL. The API is based on Swagger and provides a user-friendly experience with tools like Postman and Paw. With the Bitrise API, users can create their own apps that exploit its openness, as seen in projects like BitWall and Bitrise Reports, both of which are open-source and available for download or contribution. The API's development is ongoing, but it has already provided valuable functionality to extend Bitrise with custom applications.

Apple is requiring all apps built for its platforms to be built with Xcode 13, starting April 25, 2022, which includes SDKs for iOS 15, iPadOS 15, and watchOS 8. This means that after this date, only apps built on or above Xcode 13.x can be submitted to the App Store. Apple will still support older operating systems, but no new apps can be submitted without using Xcode 13. By supporting Xcode 13, Bitrise provides fast and easy automated builds, testing, and app deployment for mobile apps, ensuring developers have access to the latest mobile stacks and tooling.

Our company values freedom, equality, and humanity, and we reject violent actions. We are supporting Ukrainian causes through fundraising campaigns for Hungarian civil humanitarian organizations like Age of Hope. Our employees can now participate in volunteer activities due to a new policy allowing them to take volunteer day-offs. By taking action together, we show integrity and empathy while communicating transparently about our vision and impact.

Automated testing helps teams reduce the time and effort it takes to test an app. While most engineering teams recognize the importance of having an efficient suite of automated tests, the reality is that many struggle with it. For some teams, it’s a case of engineers not having the time to write or maintain scripts for automated testing. For others, it’s a case of manual testers not having enough technical know-how to write the test scripts. Codeless automation testing tools simplify the process of test automation by offering a visual approach that allows engineers and manual testers alike to easily create, maintain, and execute automation tests with no or minimal test scripts. These tools use codeless testing to automate the generation of test scripts via an interactive GUI, making it simple and more "natural" for users. With modern codeless test automation tools, testers no longer have to learn extensive coding to generate automated test scripts or convert real user flows back to code. Codeless automation testing tools are changing the face of mobile app development by making finding visual bugs easier, leading to easier maintenance because tests don’t break when the UI changes, and making automating complex workflows like localization and accessibility testing possible. When choosing a codeless test automation tool for your mobile app, consider features such as efficient element management, reusable steps, extensibility/ability to insert code, and integration with other tools. There are also ten top codeless test automation tools for mobile app development that can be checked out for your projects. However, there are some disadvantages worth noting, including the need to share files publicly, manual coding may still be required, and limited customization options. By combining codeless testing with a mobile-focused CI/CD tool like Bitrise, teams can achieve test automation excellence and release features more quickly.

AI is transforming mobile testing tools by providing efficiency gains in test creation, analysis, and maintenance. Visual locators eliminate fragile selectors, self-healing tests automatically fix issues, and visual validation features compare baseline snapshots of app screens to identify inconsistencies. Codeless testing tools use AI-powered natural language processing to simplify test case creation and maintenance. Future improvements will include automated gap analysis, intelligent test generation, and mobile-specific CI/CD solutions that integrate with modern testing tools.

Snapshot testing is a technique used to ensure that code changes don't lead to unexpected UI changes by taking screenshots of user interfaces and comparing them to reference images pixel by pixel. It's a fast and cost-efficient way to test iOS apps, especially for SwiftUI views, which can be challenging to inspect manually. Many developers rely on snapshot testing as a required step in their CI/CD pipelines before releasing their applications. While it has some drawbacks, such as potential issues with new versions of iOS breaking tests or code coverage being thrown out, snapshot testing is an effective tool for verifying behavior that changes frequently, such as user interfaces and UI layouts. By using frameworks like SwiftSnapshotTesting and iOSSnapshotTestCase, developers can easily implement snapshot tests in their projects, making it easier to deliver high-quality apps faster.