Are there any best practices when using WatiN tests in Continuous Integration with VS2008 and TFS?

Question

We are currently using VS2008 SP1, TFS, and WatiN in our Continuous Integration process.  Our WatiN tests work fine on our dev boxes when hitting either the portal on our dev boxes or the portal on the Continuous Integration server.

We have setup the TFS service to run on an interactive port on our build server so that WatiN test can also be executed on the build server against the portal on the Continuous Integration server.  We have also made sure that IE settings on the build server are similar to those on our dev boxes.

We currently experience random failures in the WatiN tests.  Sometimes all tests pass (which is what we want).  Other times 1 or 2 of the test fail and they are not always the same tests that fail.  We thought this may be a timing issue so we added some sleep statements; however, the random errors still have not gone away.  We cannot recreate these random errors on our dev boxes.  They only occur on the build server when executed by the TFS id.

Does anyone have any suggestions?  If you need more details, let me know.

Answer 1

Hi,

What do you mean by TFS id?  Sorry that I did not use WatiN before, so it is better that to as this question in the third-part product forum.

Best Regards,
Ruiz

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Answer 2

In regards to the TFS id, I mean the user id used by Team Foundation server used to run our Continuous Integration builds.  We used the following link to setup our interactive port for TFS:  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb399142.aspx

If anyone has used TFS and WatiN in Continuous Integration successfully please let me know.  In the meantime, I'll try some other forums.