Forum Discussion

chrisb's avatar
chrisb
Regular Contributor
11 years ago

Add an existing item wholly to project?

Hi, I would like to be able to import a script wholly from one project to another within a project suite but it seems that TC creates a reference to the script in its original location, in effe...
  • Ryan_Moran's avatar
    Ryan_Moran
    11 years ago
    Technically speaking this is bad practice to copy existing functions/scripts and use them in different projects. It's good practice to encapsulate by using the same script and likely why the add script works the way it does. That said you can copy the SJ file from your Project>Script folder, give it a different name, then add it using the Add Existing option you mentioned. Or simply copy all the code into a new script. :)



    (Can also right click Save As and save it into a different script)
chrisb's avatar
chrisb
Regular Contributor
11 years ago
robert Agreed in the context of test development you described. As I mentioned to Ryan in my previous reply I should have added some context to my original post. The issue is that we have multiple testers writing tests in our project which is using the source contol integration which is fine and dandy up to this point.

Rather than pollute the working test code with scripts that are under development we create them locally by switching off the option to automatically bind new project items to source control. Unfortunately the workflow in Test Complete forces you to check out the project element 'Script' which in turn creates a reference to the script file. This now causes a missing file warning message any time another testing opens the project. Again, up until this point everything is fine.

We then schedule our tests to run using Test Execute. Test Execute quits the test run immediately upon the warning message being displayed! Note: this has nothing to do with whether warning messages are enabled or not in project settings.

This got me thinking about a work around where testers could develop scripts in a completely seperate project within the suite thus not polluting the good test code in the main project and avoding the issue of missing files when trying to execute a run with Test Execute. The problem with this is that we cannot wholly imported a finished test script into the main project using any features in Test Complete IDE, we can only share the script. This means we now have the script forever in 2 projects or hack our way around it by renaming and moving files. Note that hacking this causes more grief as the project is under source control. 



So, the real problem and the question I probably should have asked originally is 'How can we create a file locally inside a project that is under Source Control without Test Complete forcing us to check out the 'Script' element and add a reference to the file to the project?' If we cant then why on earth does Test Complete give us the option to choose to switch off automatic binding of new project files to the source control?



Any suggestions on how to use the source control integration in Test Complete and have multiple testers develop scripts within a project would be welcome! Note, because TC compiles all the scripts in the project we cant have testers adding half finished or tests with issues in them in the project. I did consider that option, as undesirable as it is.