Re: dogtail How to control "Software Updater" or "pirut" program?

[David Malcolm <dmalcolm redhat com>]

On Sat, 2007-12-29 at 19:36 +0800, Charles Tan wrote:
> hi, guys,
> I'm a python rookie, and I want to automatically test some GUI
> programs, for example, the gnome Software Updater(or pirut). My idea
> is very simple, that use a program to control the other programs being
> tested.
> And I found dogtail is very good at testing gtk+ based applications.
> But it could not test pirut, which is written in python, because it
> couldn't sniff the buttons and menus inside the pirut.
> I've read some code of the pirut and it used gtk, gtk.glade to
> generate the windows. I don't know why pirut could not sniff the
> widgets in the "pirut" program. Could some kindly guys explain the
> reason? Or tell me an alternative method to automatically test
> "pirut"?

You say that the widgets aren't visible in sniff; to what extent does
the app itself appear in sniff: does the app appear, do the windows?

I have a vague memory of problems with privileged apps; "pirut" on
Fedora IIRC is launched with a wrapper script that asks for root's
password, and then runs pirut as root, and I think that this can stop
the app appearing in "sniff".

If it's not appearing in "sniff", you could try launching the executable
directly, rather than the wrapper, or try running the whole thing logged
into a desktop session as root (which is not to be recommended in
general due to security risks).

It's not going to work with dogtail if it doesn't appear in sniff, so
get this working first.

Hope this helps, though I could be misremembering this.
Dave