October 2013 Summaries

At Sauce Labs, they value open source software for its freedom, efficiencies, and possibilities. They've built a platform using Selenium and Appium, open-sourced their tutorials to encourage feedback and contributions, and are actively contributing to various open source projects themselves. Recognizing the importance of the open source ecosystem to their business, they're building an Ecosystem and Integrations team to improve their open source ecosystem and provide helpful integrations with other projects and services. This team aims to be a "Node company" to the Node community, a "PHP company" to the PHP community, and so on, by solving issues, writing idiomatic code, prioritizing documentation, and communicating with communities in an effective manner. Sauce is growing fast and is looking for developers to join this team to help build out its vision.

This summary provides a list of error messages that may be encountered on Sauce Labs, along with explanations and troubleshooting steps for each. Automated job errors include issues such as invalid credentials, user termination, timeout errors, unsupported OS/browser/version combinations, browser failures to start, client disconnections, runaway executions, and framework-specific errors like Appium mobile app failures. Manual job errors involve problems loading jobs or displaying the VNC stream from remote machines, while framework-specific errors relate to testing frameworks such as Selenium and Appium. The error messages and troubleshooting steps are intended to help users understand and resolve issues with their Sauce Labs tests.

Hiring developers can be challenging, but it's not impossible. According to Adam Christian, VP of Development at Sauce Labs, what sets them apart from other companies is their focus on building a development team that aligns with their values and priorities. They listen to what developers want out of their future and work hard to create opportunities that are individually exciting for each hire. They also prioritize transparency and honesty in the hiring process, making sure to communicate clearly about expectations and compensation. By using a thoughtful systematic search approach, leveraging personal networks, and investing in internal resources, they've been able to attract top talent from around the world. The key takeaway is that there's no magic formula, but with patience, persistence, and a focus on building strong relationships with developers, it's possible to build a successful development team.

The combination of Cucumber and Appium can be used for automating iOS apps in the cloud using Sauce Labs. To get started, developers need to have a Mac OSX 10.7.4 or higher with Xcode installed, their app source code or a prebuilt .app bundle, and a Saucelabs username and API key. The Appium server needs to be set up by downloading the `Mac OSX Appium.dmg` package or running it from source, authorizing use of the iOS Simulator, and compiling and uploading the iOS app on Sauce Labs using optional parameters like `TARGET_DEVICE_FAMILY`. Cucumber is used for writing tests in a behavior-driven development format, with features, step definitions, and support code. The `sauce_capabilities` function is used to define the desired capabilities for the test, and the `sauce_url` function returns the URL for the Sauce Labs remote WebDriver instance. The `sauce` object is created using the `Selenium::WebDriver.for(:remote, :desired_capabilities => sauce_capabilities, :url => sauce_url)`. Step definitions are written in a separate file and implemented using Selenium-Webdriver JSON Wire Protocol for Appium. Once all steps are defined, Cucumber can be run to execute tests on Sauce Labs, with the ability to view video and screenshots of the job.