This document describes various guidelines and best practices for automated
testing of the GitLab project.
It is meant to be an _extension_ of the [thoughtbot testing
styleguide](https://github.com/thoughtbot/guides/tree/master/style/testing). If
this guide defines a rule that contradicts the thoughtbot guide, this guide
takes precedence. Some guidelines may be repeated verbatim to stress their
importance.
## Overview
GitLab is built on top of [Ruby on Rails][rails], and we're using [RSpec] for all
the backend tests, with [Capybara] for end-to-end integration testing.
On the frontend side, we're using [Karma] and [Jasmine] for JavaScript unit and
integration testing.
Following are two great articles that everyone should read to understand what
automated testing means, and what are its principles:
- [Five Factor Testing](https://www.devmynd.com/blog/five-factor-testing): Why do we need tests?
- [Principles of Automated Testing](http://www.lihaoyi.com/post/PrinciplesofAutomatedTesting.html): Levels of testing. Prioritize tests. Cost of tests.
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## [Testing levels](testing_levels.md)
Learn about the different testing levels, and how to decide at what level your
changes should be tested.
---
## [Testing best practices](best_practices.md)
Everything you should know about how to write good tests: RSpec, FactoryGirl,
system tests, parameterized tests etc.
---
## [Frontend testing standards and style guidelines](frontend_testing.md)
Everything you should know about how to write good Frontend tests: Karma,
testing promises, stubbing etc.
---
## [Flaky tests](flaky_tests.md)
What are flaky tests, the different kind of flaky tests we encountered, and what
we do about them.
---
## [GitLab tests in the Continuous Integration (CI) context](ci.md)
How GitLab test suite is run in the CI context: setup, caches, artifacts,
parallelization, monitoring.
---
## [Testing Rake tasks](testing_rake_tasks.md)
Everything you should know about how to test Rake tasks.
---
## Spinach (feature) tests
GitLab [moved from Cucumber to Spinach](https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/pull/1426)
for its feature/integration tests in September 2012.
As of March 2016, we are [trying to avoid adding new Spinach
