FAQ on Expecco General/en

Settings & Preferences

My changed settings have vanished after restart

You have to click on the "Save" button in the settings dialog. Otherwise, the settings will only be valid for the current session.
The settings dialog will ask you when it is closed.

Some characters in names are not shown (or shown as empty boxes)

This happens if characters are not present in the font. These are typically shown as a an empty box, or sometimes as a crossed-out box. Often, this happens on Unix systems with far-east characters.

• goto "Extras" → "Settings" → "Look & Feel" → "Font"
• click on "Change" for the "List" font (and maybe others)
• select a font which shows the characters in the preview (eg., on a MAC, choose a font with "Unicode" in its name)
• save the settings

I want to change the keyboard mappings (shortcuts)

When started, expecco consults (among others) a file named "private_keyboard.rc" which defines the mapping between shortcut keys and functions. The definitions there are Smalltalk expressions. Take any of those as a template and either modify that file, or add corresponding expressions to a file named "private_keyboard.rc" in your "<home>/.smalltalk" folder.

For example, the file's contents could be:

|map|
map := Screen current keyboardMap.
map at:#'Ctrl_' put:#ZoomOutAll.
map at:#'Ctrl*' put:#ZoomInAll.
map at:#CtrlHome put:#BeginOfText.
map at:#Ctrlv put:#Paste.
map at:#AltTab put:#FocusNext.
map at:#CtrlCursorLeft put:#PreviousWord.
map at:#CtrlInsert put:#Copy.
map at:#ShiftInsert put:#Paste.

Execution

Can I have a testplan to be repeated automatically?

Yes, select the testplan and scroll down the editor page. At the bottom, you'll find various settings to repeat the test cases of the plan.

Can I have an individual test case to be repeated?

Not via a simple check toggle. You should create a new compound action, place the original test case into its network (as a step), and create a loop by connecting its output-trigger to its input trigger. Do not forget a stop-condition test (to pass the trigger signal only, if some condition is met), to prevent it from endless looping (unless you want it to loop until an error happens).

Documentation

Can I generate a list of my test cases / test plans in ASCII?

Use actions from the reflection library to first enumerate the tree items (extract test plans / extract test cases) and then (for each) extract the name or whatever attribute you need, to finally write all that to a stream (or the Transcript, from which it can be copy-pasted).

Can I add a link to a web page in a documentation item?

Yes, select HTML and enter the link as '<A HREF="http://....>linkText</A>'. When clicked, your web browser will be opened showing that page.

It is also possible to add a link of the form: '<A HREF="tree://nameOfTreeItem>linkText</A>'; when clicked, expecco will navigate to that tree item. This is useful to guide the reader to some action or test case. The nameOfTreeItem can be a GLOB pattern.

License Issues

How to update/change the license file

You will get an eMail containing a license file;

• please close expecco,
• find and remove (or rename) the file named .expeccoLicense in your home directory (eg. C:\Users\username)
• reopen expecco. It will ask for a license file
• either drag & drop the new license file or select it in the file dialog

Updates & releases

What happens when a new expecco-release is installed

Your test suites, configuration and settings files are not affected by a release change. These are kept separately from the expecco release files which are installed in the "Program Files" folder (Windows) or "/opt" (Unix).

We put a lot effort into making new releases backward compatible. In general, there is no need to modify existing test suites or to reimport libraries. All suites are "self-contained", meaning that any previously imported library is contained and unaffected by the release change (unless you reimport and save the suite).

In a few cases, incompatibilities were introduced in the past by changed timing or by a bug fix, for which customers already added a workaround, which no longer matched the new release. However, the later can only happen after a reimport (eg. of the standard library).

If your suite fails to execute in a new release (without reimport), we consider that as a malfunction and exept will provide a fix (patch) as soon as possible. Please report such behavior via expeccoALM, for it to be fixed.

Please read the release notes before installing a new version, install the new release in a separate folder (i.e. without removing the older version), and test run your suite(s) before switching.

Be careful, if the new release has added features which were previously not present: if such features are used, and a suite is saved, the suite may report errors when executed in the older version.
Such a situation can arise in two scenarios:

• you are working with an older expecco version, and import/load a library of a newer version from exept.
• some of your team members are already working with the new version, whereas others still use an older one

Expecco gives you a warning upon load time, that the suite was saved by a newer version.  

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