SpecFlow
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SpecFlowOSS
What is the status of this project?
This is a great question since we invest a lot on writing specflow tests internally ...
I've sent a similar question to [email protected] two weeks ago, but I haven't received any response.
I was surprised when I registered for SpecFlow+LivingDoc and received an email on behalf of @SabotageAndi, who has left Tricentis several months ago. Additionally, the SpecFlow Community has also been quiet for a while, with no responses.
We asked @SabotageAndi in the Discord channel what's up with the project several months ago and he indicated he did not know, other than that he moved on and @gasparnagy isn't paid by Tricentis anymore to do work on SpecFlow. LinkedIn pages of several other developers on the SpecFlow team seem to indicate that they have moved on as well in or around March of this year. None of the emails sent to Tricentis were answered thus far.
Not sure what this all means, but it does paint a bleak picture.
Yeah, sorry. I have no clue what Tricentis is doing with SpecFlow. As I wrote on Discord I tried to start a handover of it to other people, but it didn't go anywhere.
I've sent a similar question to [email protected] two weeks ago, but I haven't received any response.
Yeah, I was the last one who monitored that address.
I was surprised when I registered for SpecFlow+LivingDoc and received an email on behalf of @SabotageAndi, who has left Tricentis several months ago.
Thanks for the info. When I left I told them to change that. I will remind them again to do that.
I have still some friends at Tricentis. I will contact them. Perhaps they can nudge the people in charge to say something.
Many people, teams and projects use SpecFlow, including my own projects, so I don't think we have to worry about the future existence of it.
I think it is rather the timing and the way of handling is unclear.
SpecFlow is an open-source project, but Tricentis owns the branding (domain name, nuget package keys, logos, etc.), so drastic actions, like forking would require to rename the project which is not very convinient for the people. But this is possible and I will make it if necessary.
In a few weeks (when people are back from vacation) I will start again somehow finding a person at Tricentis who can provide any info on their plans and based on the result we will find a solution. (If you feel like you can help in this, please send me a message.)
Nevertheless it is good to know that many people caring about the product. Please hold on, and feel free to share your thoughts here.
@gasparnagy just wanted to say your update is very welcome! SpecFlow is a great library, and I'd hate to see it die due to neglect by Tricentis (especially when the source code is right here!)
Very interested in any progress you make 🙂
Thanks to both yourself and @SabotageAndi for your continued support and interaction with the community. It's very much appreciated!
This thread is just what I was looking for! Our organization is looking to take a quick jump to .Net7 and then to .NET 8 soon. I would hate to have to remove the functionality of Specflow from our test implemenation. @gasparnagy We all look forward to any updates you might be able to find!
Any updates on this @gasparnagy ? I would greatly appreciate your efforts if you could get a 'proof of life' etc
I was trying to collect further adwises on how to proceed, and I think I am ready to move on. I will come up with a proposal draft with @SabotageAndi and send it to Tricentis in a few days. I will keep you updated.
I had a call with Tricentis today and we've discussed the status of the project. They are now going to check the options to bring more activity to the project and we continue the discussion in ~2w time. The discussion was positive and I'm pretty sure it will lead to a good outcome. I will keep you informed.
I will keep you informed.
The next meeting with Tricentis is scheduled for 9th October.
Our team "hitched our wagon" to SpecFlow and is hopeful for it's future. Thanks @gasparnagy and @SabotageAndi !
@genne5 They did not show up in the meeting... :( I've tried to reschedule it with no success so far.
Disappointing. Do we have any idea what Tricentis thoughts are at this time?
@Code-Grump I agree. I don't have a clear view on what is happening, have some ideas, but only speculation...
Well SpecFlow doesn't drive revenue for Tricentis. They've also dropped it from many of their recent presentations where they show off their other [profitable] solutions.
Update: We had the meeting yesterday evening. They informed me (us) that now the awareness has been raised that they need to act to keep the project in healthy state. They currently considering different options on how this should happen, but this should be also decided within a few weeks.
We also discussed that whatever the chosen option will be, they will also consider what temporary/immediate steps are required until the selected solution is implemented. For this I started to make a list, that currently looks like this. Please feel free to comment here if anything else should be added.
- Make sure that the build system works
- Release v4.0 (with the current state, maybe fix critical issues if threre are any, see below)
- Triage issues and pull requests created recently (e.g. this year) and classify them accordingly.
If you have any open issue that is related to the SpecFlow v4.0 beta release and you think it must be considered before release, please also comment here.
I've been looking to get this feature included into the next major version of SpecFlow for some time: https://github.com/SpecFlowOSS/SpecFlow/pull/1983
Thanks so much for the info Gaspar and keeping all of us up to date. That definitely sounds like a great place to start - any activity at this point is certainly welcome.
I'll throw my own selfish plug though - Scenario level parallel exec is definitely a big one for us: https://github.com/SpecFlowOSS/SpecFlow/issues/2225
@jrod567 The scenario-level parallel access is a valid topic, but that one is a bigger chunk, so I would not delay releasing v4.0 for that. We can ask to prioritize that once the things are rolling. But I will keep that in mind anyway.
@gasparnagy First of all, I would like to thank you for supporting the users of specflow community.
From my perspectives, below issues can be considered to use powerful specflow+ runner.
- Support specflow+ runner with latest .NET version. Currently it works only with .NET Core 5.0
- Resolve issues with using Selenium Manager & specflow+ runner in tests. Currently Selenium Manager fails here.
@sudgarre SpecFlow+ Runner is retired for more than 1 1/2 years. See blogpost: https://specflow.org/using-specflow/the-retirement-of-specflow-runner/
And this was when I was still at Tricentis. I wrote the blogpost. So I am pretty sure Tricentis will not resurrect the SpecFlow+ Runner. All the points why we did this, are still valid. Nothing changed in the meantime.
It's a pitty to see the project getting into this state; it's something that doesn't surprise given previous record. Hope for better days for this project or anything that borns from it! Maintaining an open-source project is not easy; requires work and commitment. For any user of the project, it's a risk to be clear. Some Xray users wanted a proper integration with SpecFlow using the common Cucumber JSON format but unfortunately they found out that this was not going to be supported anymore, from one day to the other. Anyway, best of luck for the team supporting this project here onwards.
Note to self: We would also need soon:
- Cucumber Expression support for the Rider SpecFlow plugin
- Cucumber Expression and Rule support in LivingDoc generator
- Make LivingDoc generator work with more recent .NET versions
Yeah, sorry. I have no clue what Tricentis is doing with SpecFlow. As I wrote on Discord I tried to start a handover of it to other people, but it didn't go anywhere.
I've sent a similar question to [email protected] two weeks ago, but I haven't received any response.
Yeah, I was the last one who monitored that address.
I was surprised when I registered for SpecFlow+LivingDoc and received an email on behalf of @SabotageAndi, who has left Tricentis several months ago.
Thanks for the info. When I left I told them to change that. I will remind them again to do that.
I have still some friends at Tricentis. I will contact them. Perhaps they can nudge the people in charge to say something.
@SabotageAndi We are still receiving emails in your name. Unless you have come to a new understanding with Tricentis, consider this as an update.
@gasparnagy first of all. Thank you for taking this up with Tricentis. I just came across this issue a couple of days ago as we have heavily invested our time and the usage of feature files and the specflow VS plugin and AzureDevOps Specflow+ LivingDoc. And we have recently started investing into making our integration tests parallelizable at Feature level. And are now ready to also do this at scenario level. We have a couple of concerns as organization using Specflow "Products":
Our root and main concern is the sustainability model. Since we are not paying for any of the Specflow products and services, we question the commitment and development umph for Specflow in general. Comments made by @SabotageAndi further decreases our confidence in this regard. I can't imagine that all the companies who use these products and tools aren't also willing to pay for it. All other concerns stem from this concern.
Another concern is adoptability. Do we have a clear picture of the market/usage-share of specflow products and services? Or have most companies moved on and is there only a remnant of companies left who still use this? I say this because in my network I increasingly hear more voices talking about the fact that they used to use specflow. But have dropped it from their way of working.
Dave Farley, used to mention specflow as one of his sponsors. But is now using Tricentis. Just wondering if there are lessons earned from years of using specflow in different projects that have lead to new insights or even better solutions. As using Feature Files is a serious commitment and investment with clear trade-offs.
