Dockerization Part 1: Building

I’ve been long overdue for a series of articles explaining how our current build system works. One of the major projects I was involved with before this recent reorg involved overhauling our manual build process into a shiny new CI/CD system that would take the code from commit to production in a regulated, automated fashion. As always, the reward for doing a good job is more work like that; when we decided to move to Docker to better support our new team structure, I ended up doing a lot of the foundational work on our new build-test-deliver pipeline. Continue reading

Selenium Grid on Docker and Vagrant: Part 2

Last time we got Vagrant configured to run a single VM with three docker containers: a Selenium Grid hub, a Chrome node, and a Firefox node. This is a good start, but I wanted to configure a Selendroid node to round out the browser selection. That’s when things got a little… messy. So upon investigation into how the Docker images I was already using were constructed, I discovered a few key points: Continue reading

Selenium Grid on Docker and Vagrant: Part 1

I’ve been putting together a quick proof-of-concept here at work about how we could use Docker to run a Selenium Grid. I’m not sure we’ll go that route, but I was curious how it could be done. One of the main advantages of doing this sort of rough proof in Vagrant is that it becomes very portable. At the end of the day, I have a mini testing cloud I can run my tests against — and any member of my team can check out a few files and have their own mini testing cloud. Continue reading

Teatime: Containers and VMs

Welcome back to Teatime! This is a weekly feature in which we sip tea and discuss some topic related to quality. Feel free to bring your tea and join in with questions in the comments section. Tea of the week: Ceylon by Sub Rosa Tea. This is a nice, basic, bold tea, very astringent; it’s great for blending so long as you don’t choose delicate flavors to blend with. It really adds a kick! Continue reading