Written by Louisa Seers, Product Manager at IBM and Chair of the Galasa Technical Steering Committee (TSC), and Caroline McNamara, Content developer at IBM and Galasa Contributor
The Technology – Gherkin, Eclipse, and the CLI
The first quarter in 2024 has been full of new enhancements, with the latest version 0.32.0 being released in March. One of the major pieces of work that was agreed at the project steering committee, was the removal of the Eclipse Plug-In. This has been a feature of Open Mainframe Project’s Galasa for a while now, and the decision to become IDE-agnostic, CLI-focussed, and more streamlined as a project, has meant that with the 0.32.0 release, the plug-in has been deprecated. Users can still use Galasa in an Eclipse environment using the in-built terminal, but this also opens up avenues for alternative IDEs such as VS Code, IntelliJ, and many others of your choice. This has been followed by Gherkin support, improved security and authentication within the Galasa tests, and 3270 image rendering by the CLI.
Restarting and cancelling a test has been introduced to provide parity with the existing Eclipse plug-in. It allows you to manage tests that have encountered problems during execution in the Ecosystem, so if a test gets stuck due to a timeout or other unexpected issue, you can reset it by restarting the test in the queue. If the reset doesn’t resolve the problem and you want to give up on the test entirely, you can cancel it. It’s important to note that cancelling a test won’t erase any data about the test that’s already been collected and stored in the RAS (Reporting and Analysis System). Finally, these commands send the reset or cancel request to the server immediately, without waiting for confirmation. The success of the command simply means the server received the request, not that the reset or cancellation is complete.
Lastly, a number of users have been asking about Gherkin support. The Galasa framework is now fully Gherkin capable, with updated documentation to show how to run a local Gherkin test, supporting Gherkin keywords on the z/OS 3270 manager, and much more. This allows the user to choose how to craft their tests and fit with their existing languages. In addition, the introduction of 3270 image rendering means that users can list tests that are run, pick one, download it, and then show the rendered image for auditing and capturing purposes that are vital to those users that need to keep track of their tests. Galasa would welcome more contributions to help us move the Gherkin support forward.
The Team – Iteration Planning, TSC, and Scrums
This quarter has been a lot of fun, we have been continuing to run with our fortnightly iteration planning meetings (like Mike presenting the one below) with the regular team looking through items to include on the plan for the next two weeks. You can join us on a Monday at 2pm GMT (here). This has also included three scrums a week to talk about what someone has achieved, what the blockers are, and what their plan is for the next day.
The Technical Steering Committee (TSC) monthly calls (on the second Tuesday of the month at 3pm GMT here) have also been running once a month, in January, Mike presented the technical roadmap for 2024 and as a group, we evaluated the different features and changes we were looking to make, including a version 1, increasing the functionality of the CLI and potential items for later this year like test scheduling.
Additionally, in January the TSC spent some time looking at our goals for the year and how we could measure them. The TSC spent some time looking at how we might measure usage of Galasa and bring more contributors into the fold to foster some new ideas, fresh ways of looking at the code, and ways to develop Galasa that we haven’t thought of yet. The next step for the TSC is looking at a charter and for us to review the roadmap for 2Q and beyond.
Lastly, Will Yates represented the team at SHARE Orlando in early March, which led to some great sessions around getting started with Galasa, how to go from zero to test case in 60 minutes. The feedback was brilliant and it gets the project off to a great start in 2024 to grow the message and audience.
The Docs – Simbank, CLI, and more
The docs are significantly restructured to focus content around using the CLI to perform tasks in Galasa now that Eclipse is no longer supported. New content and supporting diagrams have been publish about authentication, along with information on how to install an Ecosystem using Helm. Lastly, a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page is now available and is updated regularly with answers to queries raised in the OMP Galasa Slack workspace or with the team.
You can also find content about the technical updates have happened over the last quarter in the Galasa website (https://galasa.dev/), including information on running Gherkin tests using the CLI and other new CLI commands that have been implemented, so you can get started quickly on newly available features.
