Revision: 3759
Author: pekka.klarck
Date: Thu Jun 10 05:32:34 2010
Log: keep copy of 25 prev release notes
http://code.google.com/p/robotframework/source/detail?r=3759
Added:
/wiki/PreviewReleases25.wiki
=======================================
--- /dev/null
+++ /wiki/PreviewReleases25.wiki Thu Jun 10 05:32:34 2010
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+#summary Robot Framework 2.5 pre-releases
+
+<wiki:toc max_depth="1"/>
+
+= Robot Framework 2.5 Preview Releases =
+
+Robot Framework (RF) 2.5 is a new major release with loads of bigger and
smaller enhancements and bug fixes. Before the final release there will be
some alpha, beta, and release candidate releases in order to:
+
+ * make the already implemented features available to users,
+ * get feedback from the new features, and
+ * allow users to test the new version on their environments.
+
+[#Robot_Framework_2.5_Alpha_1 RF 2.5 apha 1] was released on 2010-05-06,
and
+[#Robot_Framework_2.5_Release_Candidate_1 RF 2.5 release candidate 1] on
2010-05-31.
+The target is to get the final release out on Monday 2010-06-07.
+
+Please submit possible bugs you encounter with the preview releases to the
+[http://code.google.com/p/robotframework/issues/list issue tracker], and
send general
+comments and questions to the [MailingLists mailing lists].
+
+= Downloads =
+
+The latest pre-release is always available on the
+[http://code.google.com/p/robotframework/downloads/list download page].
+
+= Most important new features =
+
+== Continuing test execution on failure ==
+
+Being able to continue the test execution after failures was the most
requested feature in RF 2.5. There are several ways to accomplish it:
+
+ * Raising a _continuable_ exception from a test library (issue 137)
+ * Using `Run Keyword And Continue On Failure` keyword (issue 545)
+ * In teardowns all keywords are executed automatically (issue 544)
+
+In all these cases the test will be marked failed at the end. Its final
error message is created by combining the messages from the occurred
failures together.
+
+== Stopping test execution gracefully ==
+
+Another important test execution related feature is the ability to stop
the test execution fully so that reports and logs are generated. Nowadays
there are several ways to do it:
+
+ * Pressing `Ctrl-C` (issue 108)
+ * Using signals `SIGINT` and `SIGTERM` (issue 349)
+ * Raising a _fatal_ exception from a test library (issue 366)
+ * Using `Fatal Error` keyword (issue 546)
+
+== Support for named arguments ==
+
+The named arguments syntax (issue 215) makes it possible to use keywords
that have several arguments with default values so that only certain
arguments are overridden.
+For example, the keyword below could be used like `| Named Arg Example |
zap=42 |` and first two arguments would get their default values.
+
+{{{
+ def named_arg_example(foo=1, bar=2, zap=3):
+ print foo, bar, zap
+}}}
+
+== Possibility to specify test template to ease data-driven testing ==
+
+*NOTE:* This is a new feature in RF 2.5 release candidate 1.
+
+Test templates (issue 500) allow specifying the keyword to use in test
+cases only once. This makes data-driven testing, where the same
+keyword is executed with the same input and/or output values, easier
+and reduces duplication. An added benefit is that when a test has
+multiple steps, all of them will be executed even if one of the steps
+fails.
+
+This functionality can be enabled for all tests in a file with in the
+setting table with the setting `Test Template` or for individual tests
+with the setting `[Template]`. The example below illustrates the
+latter usage.
+
+{{{
+***Test Case***
+Invalid login
+ [Template] Login with invalid user name and password should fail
+ ${VALID USER} invalid password
+ invalid user ${VALID PASSWORD}
+ invalid user xxx
+ ${VALID USER} ${EMPTY}
+ ${EMPTY} ${VALID PASSWORD}
+ ${EMPTY} ${EMPTY}
+}}}
+
+== Possibility to validate test data using dry-run ==
+
+A new command line option `--runmode dryrun` was added to support
validation of test data without actually executing the lowest level
keywords (issue 452).
+
+== Full Jython 2.5 support ==
+
+Robot Framework 2.1.3 already works with Jython 2.5 but there were some
rough edges . Nowadays Jython 2.5 is fully and officially supported (issue
198), and even installation using it works (issue 547).
+
+
+= Backwards incompatible changes =
+
+== Minimum Python/Jython version is 2.5 ==
+
+Robot Framework 2.5 only runs on Python and Jython 2.5 or newer (but on
3.x yet).
+If you cannot upgrade your Python/Jython installation, you can use older
Robot Framework releases that support Jython 2.2 and Python 2.3 and newer.
+
+== Not compatible with previous RIDE and Mabot releases ==
+
+The internal changes in the framework have made it incompatible with
+the previous [http://code.google.com/p/robotframework-ride RIDE] and
+[http://code.google.com/p/robotframework-mabot Mabot]
+releases.
+
+ * RF 2.5 alpha 1 is compatible with
[http://code.google.com/p/robotframework-ride/wiki/ReleaseNotes#RIDE_0.23
RIDE 0.23], which is also compatible with
[http://code.google.com/p/robotframework/wiki/ReleaseNotes21#Robot_Framework_2.1.3
RF 2.1.3].
+ * RF 2.5 rc 1 is currently not compatible with any RIDE release.
+ * No RF 2.5 preview release is compatible with Mabot.
+
+== Other backwards incompatible changes ==
+
+Potentially backwards incompatible issues are
+[http://code.google.com/p/robotframework/issues/list?can=1&q=target%3D2.5+label%3Dbwic
labeled
with bwic label in the issue tracker]. Why these changes may cause
problems will be explained thoroughly later when these release notes are
improved.
+
+= Deprecated features =
+
+Will be listed later.
+
+= Robot Framework 2.5 Release Candidate 1 =
+
+Robot Framework Release Candidate 1 was released 2010-05-31. This release
contains all
+functionality intended to be included in RF 2.5 and the main issues
holding back the final
+release are related to documentation. Additionally, we'll continue
implementing compatible
+RIDE release straight after the RC.
+
+Full list of issues that were closed after alpha1 is listed below.
+
+
+|| Issue 377 || Enhancement || High || Don't convert test suite, test case
and keyword names unnecessarily ||
+|| Issue 452 || Enhancement || High || Possibility to verify test data
without actually executing tests (dry-run) ||
+|| Issue 486 || Enhancement || High || Parsing modules should preserve
comments to keep them available for RIDE and other tools ||
+|| Issue 500 || Enhancement || High || Possibility to specify 'Test
Template' for all tests to ease data-driven testing ||
+|| Issue 564 || Enhancement || High || Disallow using `...@{list}` variables
with settings that require scalar values to ease parsing ||
+|| Issue 518 || Documentation || High || Document that Python/Jython
version must be >= 2.5 (and < 3.0) ||
+|| Issue 444 || Defect || Medium || Quickstart Demo fails in windows if
sut directory has whitespace ||
+|| Issue 550 || Defect || Medium || Non-integer value with `FOR IN RANGE`
can break the whole test execution ||
+|| Issue 232 || Enhancement || Medium || Possibility to configure parsing
so that files having test case table are not ignored even if they don't
have tests ||
+|| Issue 515 || Enhancement || Medium || Importing Java libraries does not
work on standalone Jython ||
+|| Issue 524 || Enhancement || Medium || Parsing modules should preserve
table headers to make them available for RIDE and other tools ||
+|| Issue 553 || Enhancement || Medium || Remove `robotidy.py` tool ||
+|| Issue 563 || Enhancement || Medium || Support for setting suite
metadata using syntax `| Metadata | Name | Value |` ||
+|| Issue 403 || Refactoring || Medium || Parsed user keyword objects
should have all data even if part of the data is invalid ||
+|| Issue 560 || Enhancement || Low || For loop without body or without
values should fail ||
+|| Issue 562 || Enhancement || Low || Suite metadata names should not be
converted unnecessarily ||
+|| Issue 481 || Refactoring || Low || Cleanup `robot.utils` module ||
+
+Altogether 17 issues.
+
+
+= Robot Framework 2.5 Alpha 1 =
+
+The first RF 2.5 pre-release was releases on 2010-05-06. Full list of
issues is below.
+
+|| *ID* || *Type* || *Priority* || *Summary* ||
+|| Issue 198 || Enhancement || Critical || Jython 2.5 support ||
+|| Issue 288 || Defect || High || It is not possible to assign all Python
and Java iterables to list variables ||
+|| Issue 529 || Defect || High || UTF-8 BOM is not ignored in plain text
or TSV test data files ||
+|| Issue 108 || Enhancement || High || Ctrl-c should stop test execution
gracefully ||
+|| Issue 137 || Enhancement || High || Support for continuing test
execution regardless of failures (ContinueOnFailure) ||
+|| Issue 215 || Enhancement || High || Support for named arguments to ease
overriding only certain default values ||
+|| Issue 349 || Enhancement || High || It should be possible to stop test
execution gracefully with signal ||
+|| Issue 366 || Enhancement || High || Stop execution if special "fatal"
exception raised ||
+|| Issue 398 || Enhancement || High || Remove `Default Tags` and `Test
Timeout` from test suite initialization files ||
+|| Issue 544 || Enhancement || High || Run all keywords in teardown even
if there are failures ||
+|| Issue 474 || Defect || Medium || Byte strings containing non-ASCII
characters not escaped on Jython ||
+|| Issue 499 || Defect || Medium || HTML entity references having values
outside ISO-8859-1 are not resolved correctly. ||
+|| Issue 509 || Defect || Medium || Non-ASCII output returned by `Run` and
`Start Process` keywords is decoded incorrectly when stdout is redirected
(e.g. in CI environment) ||
+|| Issue 516 || Defect || Medium || Non-ASCII characters not shown
correctly on the console output ||
+|| Issue 520 || Defect || Medium || Using a timeouted keyword with wrong
number of arguments causes FrameworkError ||
+|| Issue 521 || Defect || Medium || Keywords executing other keywords
(`Run Kw and Ignore/Expect Error`, `Wait Until Kw Succeeds`) hide syntax
errors and timeouts ||
+|| Issue 523 || Defect || Medium || " character at the end of test suite
documentation breaks report (and log) generation ||
+|| Issue 530 || Defect || Medium || Creating logs and reports fails on
Jython when suite name and test name contain non-ASCII characters ||
+|| Issue 534 || Defect || Medium || Showing non-ASCII characters printed
from Java libraries in logs depends on system encoding ||
+|| Issue 194 || Enhancement || Medium || Remove the old syntax for
repeating a single keyword multiple times ||
+|| Issue 321 || Enhancement || Medium || Enhance listener `start_suite`
method to provide test/suite names and and total test count ||
+|| Issue 341 || Enhancement || Medium || New `Set Test Message` keyword to
set or override test message ||
+|| Issue 342 || Enhancement || Medium || New keyword `Run Keyword If
Timeout Occurred` to BuiltIn ||
+|| Issue 343 || Enhancement || Medium || Add free metadata to attributes
passed to start_suite and end_suite listener methods ||
+|| Issue 346 || Enhancement || Medium || New variable ${SUITE SOURCE}
containing an absolute path to suite file or directory ||
+|| Issue 401 || Enhancement || Medium || Deprecate possibility to create
scalar variables containing list in variable table ||
+|| Issue 404 || Enhancement || Medium || Better styles for `libdoc.py` ||
+|| Issue 427 || Enhancement || Medium || Allow variable files'
`get_variables` to return any mapping ||
+|| Issue 484 || Enhancement || Medium || Deprecate the possibility to have
scalar and list variables with same base name (e.g. `${FOO}` and `...@{foo}`) |
|
+|| Issue 490 || Enhancement || Medium || Remove parallel execution of
keywords (`:PARALLEL` ) because it doesn't work correctly and requires
special syntax ||
+|| Issue 528 || Enhancement || Medium || Argument files cannot have
non-ASCII content ||
+|| Issue 531 || Enhancement || Medium || Show repr instead string value of
the arguments and return value in the log file ||
+|| Issue 533 || Enhancement || Medium || Documentation should include the
scope ||
+|| Issue 535 || Enhancement || Medium || Possibility to give custom styles
for `libdoc.py` ||
+|| Issue 545 || Enhancement || Medium || New keyword 'Run Keyword And
Continue On Failure' ||
+|| Issue 546 || Enhancement || Medium || New BuiltIn keyword `Fatal Error`
to stop the whole test execution ||
+|| Issue 547 || Enhancement || Medium || Enhance install.py script so that
pybot-script is not created when run with Jython ||
+|| Issue 497 || Documentation || Medium || Document that timeouts might
cause performance problems if tests are executed with Python ||
+|| Issue 511 || Defect || Low || Easter is coming but the egg is missing ||
+|| Issue 522 || Defect || Low || Errors are corrupted when test data paths
contain non-ASCII characters ||
+|| Issue 256 || Enhancement || Low || Change 'mode' argument 'Create File'
to 'encoding' and deprecate 'Create File With Encoding' ||
+|| Issue 258 || Enhancement || Low || Remove deprecated `pattern_type`
argument of `Grep File` keyword ||
+|| Issue 260 || Enhancement || Low || Remove deprecated `pattern_type`
argument from `List Directory` keywords ||
+|| Issue 271 || Enhancement || Low || Remove deprecated `Syslog` keyword ||
+|| Issue 287 || Enhancement || Low || Remove deprecated `BuiltIn.Grep`
keyword ||
+|| Issue 340 || Enhancement || Low || Increased the maximum size of the
error message to 40 lines ||
+|| Issue 358 || Enhancement || Low || Remove deprecated `return_mode`
argument of `Run` keyword ||
+|| Issue 514 || Enhancement || Low || Remove deprecated `mode` argument
from `Read Process Output` keyword ||
+|| Issue 526 || Enhancement || Low || Remove already deprecated and
ignored `--transform` option ||
+|| Issue 527 || Enhancement || Low || Remove deprecated `--colormonitor`
option ||
+
+Altogether 50 issues.
