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Release Notes

Spark Ruby​

2024.1.0​

Release Date: 19th July 2024

Changes: Required Code Version: Ruby 3.2.4 (Read our Ruby upgrade guide here)

  • Runner 1.3.0 with support for this has been released
  • Various bug fixes

Configuration Changes:

With the upgrade to 3.2, Ruby has removed support for File.exists? in favour of File.exist?. When upgrading older projects to this ruby version, some users may see errors due to the following line in their configuration files:

<%= IO.read(filename) if File.exists?(filename) %>

This line can now be removed from all configuration files as it is no longer required for config merging.

2024.0.1​

Release Date: 11th July 2024

Changes:

  • Metadata pushed to Halo
  • Top 5 failing steps and methods pushed to Halo
  • Various bug fixes

2024.0.0​

Release Date: 30th April 2024

Changes:

  • Bug fixes, performance enhancements and improved example tests

2023.1.3​

Release Date: 3rd January 2024

Changes:

  • Edge browser management handled by Selenium Manager
  • Bug fixes for Desktop app testing

Configuration changes:

Within the browser.yml file, you will need to add a version key and value as shown below within the Edge section.

default_config/browser.yml
edge:
  version: default

2023.1.2​

Release Date: 16th November 2023

Changes:

  • Firefox browser management handled by Selenium Manager

Configuration changes:

Within the browser.yml file, you will need to add a version key and value as shown below within the Firefox section.

default_config/browser.yml
firefox:
  version: default
  accept_insecure_certs: true

2023.1.1​

Release Date: 30th October 2023

Changes:

  • Failure screenshots now upload to Halo

2023.1.0​

Release Date: 20th October 2023

Required Code Version: Ruby 3.1 (Read our Ruby upgrade guide here)

Changes:

  • Browser drivers now managed by Selenium Manager
  • Support for Appium 2
  • Support for 'Chrome for Testing'
  • Removed support for Internet Explorer
  • Various bug fixes

Configuration changes:

Within the browser.yml file, you will need to add a version key and value as shown below within the Chrome section.

default_config/browser.yml
chrome:
  version: default
  jmeter: false
  owasp_zap: false
  custom_options: []
  accept_insecure_certs: true
  download_location: default

The following configuration options have been deprecated and should be removed:

  • chromedriver_version in the chrome section of browser.yml
  • geckodriver_version in the firefox section of browser.yml
  • edgedriver_version in the edge section of browser.yml
  • All internet_explorer configuration within browser.yml

2023.0.2​

Release Date: 10th July 2023

Changes:

  • Updated Lighthouse libraries to resolve a bug with Chrome versions 111 and upwards
  • Various bug fixes
  • No configuration changes required

2023.0.1​

Release Date: 22nd May 2023

Changes:

  • Various bug fixes
  • No configuration changes required

2023.0.0​

Release Date: 3rd May 2023

Changes:

  • Test Rail integration
    • Create or update a test run in Test Rail in a project
    • Link Test Rail test cases to Scenarios in Spark
    • See tutorial
  • Ability to specify Axe Standards for audit checks in audits.yml
  • Various bug fixes

2022.2.3​

Release Date: 27th February 2023

Changes:

  • Enabled sending of Lighthouse check data and full display of all Performance, Accessibility, Best Practices and SEO issues in a new Halo Lighthouse Run report
  • Support for cucumber --retry flag
  • Various bug fixes

2022.2.1​

Release Date: 6th January 2023

Changes:

2022.2.0​

Release Date: 25th October 2022

Changes:

Configuration changes:

Within the reporting.yml file, you will need to add a project_id key and value as shown below. This corresponds to the project id you want to push data to in Halo.

default_config/reporting.yml
dashboard:
  enabled: true
  project_id: 1
  label: example-label
  auth_token: api-key
  scheduled_updates: false
  scheduled_interval: 10

The following configuration options have been deprecated:

2022.1.1​

Release Date: 10th May 2022

Changes:

  • Updated Cucumber to v7.1
  • Updated Chrome based mobile emulation to use the Chrome developer tools emulated device options
  • Added mobile application visual testing capabilities
  • Various bug fixes

2022.1.0​

Release Date: 17th March 2022

Changes:

Configuration changes:

Within the mobile_app.yml and browser.yml files, you will need to add a appium_options key and value as shown below. Using this input array, you can now add any valid appium capability to configure your test run as required.

default_config/browser.yml
local_device:
  command_timeout: 60
  appium_options: []
default_config/mobile_app.yml
local_device:
  command_timeout: 60
  appium_options: []

The accessibility_testing.yml configuration file is no longer in use as of this release. It has been replaced with audits.yml. To continue using Axe for accessibility testing, please set axe as the source in audits.yml.

The following configuration options have been deprecated:

  • download_video_upon_failure in the browserstack section of browser.yml
  • allow_plugins in the chrome section of browser.yml
  • disable_info_bars in the chrome section of browser.yml
  • password_manager in the chrome section of browser.yml

2021.2.0​

Release Date: 12th November 2021

Changes:

  • Upgrading Spark to support Ruby 2.7.4

2021.1.5​

Release Date: 1st November 2021

Changes:

  • Various bug fixes

2021.1.4​

Release Date: 19th October 2021

Changes:

  • Added browserstack_options configuration input in the browser.yml file allowing users to add any additional Browserstack capabilities when running a test via the Browserstack integration.
  • Various bug fixes

Configuration changes:

Within the browser.yml file, you will need to add a browserstack_options key and value as shown below. Using this input array, you can now add any valid browserstack capability to configure your test run as required.

default_config/browser.yml
  platform: desktop

  local_testing: false
  download_video_upon_failure: false
  browserstack_debug: true
  test_name: Regression Tests
  browserstack_options: []

2021.1.3​

Release Date: 17th September 2021

Changes:

Configuration changes:

There is now an accessibility_testing.yml file. From here you can configure how accessibility checks are performed during your test run.

default_config/accessibility_testing.yml
enabled: false
source: axe

2021.1.2​

Release Date: 31st August 2021

Changes:

  • Added support for executing Percy visual tests in parallel
  • Various bug fixes

Configuration changes:

No configuration changes necessary.

2021.1.1​

Release Date: 17th August 2021

Changes:

  • Added Percy integration option for Visual Testing
  • Update to Selenium 4
  • Version check occurs at the start of a test run to ensure you are on the latest version

Configuration changes:

Within the visual_testing.yml file, there is now a percy section:

default_config/visual_testing.yml
enabled: true
source: percy

percy:
    branch: master

There is also an additional parameter in the accounts.yml file.

default_config/accounts.yml
percy:
    api_key: api_key

Notes

The Selenium dependency has been updated, and therefore so has the version of Watir. This means that some best practises that were originally flagged with deprecation warnings will now throw exceptions. Remember to express your elements in the page object classes in the following way:

element(:submit_button) { button id: 'submit-button' }

2021.1.0​

Release Date: 17th August 2021

Changes:

  • Projects must be opened in the latest version of Test Evolve Studio to be signed before test execution. This is a one time action.
    • It will generate a .testevolve file in the root of your project that should be checked into CI
  • Various bug fixes

Configuration changes:

No configuration changes necessary.

2020.5.1​

Release Date: 8th February 2021

Changes:

  • Added a new Applitools integration mandatory parameter - “branch”
  • Various bug fixes incl.
    • Cloud Reports
      • Unable to access Test Run Report or Configuration dashboard on v2020.5.0
      • Linux (Fedora) OS reported incorrectly in dashboard run properties
    • Desktop App automation
      • X11 library errors in console - Linux only
      • App Name stays as 'My Desktop App' in cloud reports when 'value' entered in TE Studio field

Configuration changes:

Within the visual_testing.yml file, in the applitools section, a new “branch” parameter has been added. The parameter is mandatory and can be set to ‘default’ or a value of your choosing if you make use of the Applitools integration. Please add this as part of your upgrade process.

2020.5.0​

Release Date: 2nd December 2020

Changes:

Added desktop app automation features

Various bug fixes

Configuration changes:

An additional configuration file has been added to configure the desktop app test type. Add the file as described here to your default_config folder.

You can view pre-requisites for desktop app automation here.

2020.4.4​

Release Date: 2nd November 2020

Changes:

Fix for an issue where ImageMagick wasn’t working for Visual Testing on Windows

Additional bug fixes and enhancements for the ImageMagick integration in the Ruby framework

Configuration changes:

No configuration changes are required for this release.

2020.4.3​

Release Date: 16th October 2020

Changes:

Various bug fixes

Configuration changes:

No configuration changes are required for this release.