What are strategies to construct reusable Sikuli screen shot libraries?

Question

I would like to use Sikuli to automate both GUI apps and Web apps running within browser on Mac OS X and Windows. My purpose is currently less for testing, and more for GUI auto

Answer 1

That looks like a great library recommended by spearson.

I would add one more concept to the list, which is calibration.

As with any testing industries, calibration of your instruments is a must.

Within the SQA/automation fields, assumption can lead to disaster.

Scenario:

On Monday, you decide on your Chrome submit button screen shots to be used in Sikuli-powered automation.

You work fast and by Tuesday, your test suite is delivering accurate pass/fails as you expect.

On Friday afternoon, just before beer'o'clock, the machine auto-upgrades to the next minor release of Chrome, which modifies the cancel buttons just enough to be matched by Sikuli as submit buttons.

You glance at your reports before leaving the office for the weekend and your reports seem to be running fine as usual, but you don't realize they're giving false-positives until dreaded Monday when things have been broken all weekend (but, hey, at least you had a good weekend!).

Totally hypothetical situation, but hopefully stresses the need for "testing your tests" or calibrating your tools in a write-once, run-many automation environment.

Solution:

To mitigate problematic situations like the one above, you could setup a web page(s) that you know behaves a certain way to interactions with the screenshots in your static library. Before each test suite/bulk automation project runs, it will call the calibration suite and make sure everything is functioning as expected, be it a browser, file manager, etc