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[Online Feedback Management System for Education]_

Developer Troubleshooting Guide

Troubleshooting project setup

Setup checklist

Common errors and solutions

Troubleshooting test failures

Optimizing IDE layout for testing

How automated Browser tests work

Getting help to resolve test failures

Common errors and solutions

Errors specific to Linux

This document can help you to fix the problems encountered while contributing to TEAMMATES.

Failing that, you can post in the teammates-contributors to ask for help.

Remember to supply as much relevant information as possible when asking for help. e.g. Which OS are you using

Troubleshooting project setup

Setup checklist

Use this checklist to verify that your project setup is correct.

1. Undo any automatic setting changes done by Eclipse

Make sure Eclipse hasn’t modified any settings/files during set up. Run git status to ensure the repo is same as the one you cloned from Google Code. If there are any changes, do an git reset --hard and restart Eclipse.

2. Check the version of the Google plugin for Eclipse

In Eclipse, go to Help → Install new software → What’s already installed

Ensure that Google Plugin version is 4.3 or 4.4 and TestNG is installed.

3. Check the text encoding settings

Window→Preferences→General→Workspace

4. Check the JDK compatibility

Project → Properties → Java Compiler

5. Check the SDK version

Project → Properties → Google → App Engine

6. Check for compilation errors

Markers tab should have 0 errors.

If it shows errors, try refreshing the project (right-click on the project in Project explorer) followed by a Project → Clean.

Common errors and solutions

  1. ERROR: Eclipse complains about FileWriter and ConsoleHandler e.g. java.io.FileWriter is not supported by Google App Engine's Java runtime environment 
    SOLUTION: These are OK because the offending files belong to test driver and will not be deployed to GAE. Choose to 'Quick Fix' and then choose to exclude those files from validation.

  1. ERROR: Eclipse complains "...your project must be configured to use a jdk in order to use jsp".
    SOLUTION: This happens because Eclipse is only aware of JRE, not JDK (Compiling JSP requires the JDK). Go to Window→Preferences→Java→Installed JREs. You will note that a JRE path is the one selected, not a JDK path. To fix this, Click add→Standard VM, then for the JRE Path enter the path of the     jre folder inside your jdk installation folder. e.g., C:\jdk1.7\jre Now you should see all of the JARs added to the library section.

  1. ERROR: When trying to deploy, Eclipse complains "... Cannot get the System Java Compiler. Please use a JDK, not a JRE.".
    SOLUTION: You can force Eclipse to use the JDK (instead of JRE) by modifying the     eclipse.ini file. See here for more details.

  1. ERROR (on Windows): Dev server launched by Eclipse keeps running even after closing Eclipse. After restarting Eclipse, you'll be able to relaunch dev server on the same port but requests will be received by the previous server instance.
    SOLUTION: If Eclipse crashes while development server is running inside Eclipse, the server might keep running even after Eclipse is closed. Go to Windows Task Manager and kill processes named javaw.exe.

  1. ERROR: Eclipse complains "file out of sync".
    SOLUTION: 'refresh' the project in eclipse.

  1. ERROR: Eclipse complains "There are no JREs installed in the workplace that are strictly compatible with this environment."
    SOLUTION: Eclipse may be using an incompatible version of the JRE Library (with respect to TEAMMATES) for the current JRE definition. System Library for JRE should be set to the workspace default, after appropriate JRE definition has been added (covered in existing point#2 of the troubleshooting section).
    -> Right-click on project -> Properties-> Java Build Path-> "Libraries" tab-> Select JRE System Library from the list-> Edit…-> Select and mark radio button for "Workspace default JRE"

  1. ERROR: Everything seems normal and the dev server starts normally. But you get a ‘Class not found” or “Class cannot initialize” error when you try to access any non-static pages of the app.
    SOLUTION: Check if the build.properties and appengine-web.xml has been renamed properly, which you were supposed to during the set up.

Troubleshooting test failures

Optimizing IDE layout for testing

The default place for the TestNG tab is alongside the Console tab.

Here’s a better place for it. Just drag the tab and drop it alongside the Project Explorer tab.

How automated Browser tests work

Our automated Browser tests compare generated Web pages with expected pages (these are in the \src\test\resources\pages folder). Such a test case fails when the expected page does not match the actual page. To see the diff between actual and expected, double click the error message in the TestNG tab.Here is an example (use the zoom feature of the Browser to see details of the screenshot).

Note that you can ignore the following differences reported by Eclipse diff tool. Those are not the cause of the test failure.

Expected

Actual

Explanation

<expected>

</expected>

<actual>

</actual>

These are inserted by the test code for easier reference, after the comparison has been done.

{*}

any text

The expression {*} is used to mark a piece of text we cannot predict in advance. e.g. current time. These differences are ignored by our comparison algorithm.

Furthermore, you might see tags such as ${test.student1} and ${version} in some of the  expected files (e.g. StudentHomeHTML.html) if you open them in Eclipse. The test code will replace those tags with correct values before performing the comparison. For example, ${version} will be replaced by something like V4.89

Getting help to resolve test failures

Remember to state which tests are failing and for each of those

Common errors and solutions

  1. ERROR: Tests fail randomly during dev server testing.
    SOLUTION: Make sure there is only one dev server running. Eclipse will happily allow you to start multiple dev servers.

  1. ERROR (on Windows), NullPointerException when trying to access email box. The error message looks something like this:
    java.lang.NullPointerException at
    javax.mail.internet.ParameterList.set(ParameterList.java:165) at
    com.sun.mail.imap.protocol.BODYSTRUCTURE.parseParameters(BODYSTRUCTURE.java:390)
    SOLUTION: In eclipse, move the javax.mail.....jar (from Oracle) to the top of the build class path. (Properties → Java build path → 'order and export' tab)

  1. ERROR: Test failure message encountered when running full test suite: “Selenium cannot find Firefox binary in PATH”.
    SOLUTION 1: Path to Firefox executable on local machine is incorrect. Specify the correct folder in system PATH variable.
    -> Open Windows Explorer-> Right-click on Computer-> Advanced System Settings-> “Advanced” tab-> Environment Variables…-> Select “PATH” from the list-> Add directory of “Mozilla Firefox” folder to “Variable value” field
    SOLUTION 2: Incorrect custom path in     test.firefox.path. Make sure that the path is set correctly following the example from test.template.properties

  1. ERROR: After deploying on the staging server, you get an error related to … Unsupported major.minor version ... when trying to access pages of the staged app.
    This can happen if you have Java 8 is installed and Eclipse uses Java 8 during deployment, even if you have already configured the project to use Java 7.
    Refer     this page to learn how to modify eclipse.ini to use Java 7 by default.
  2. ERROR: A handful of failed test cases (<10)
    SOLUTION: Ensure compatible version of Firefox is installed as specified under Prerequisites.

  1. ERROR: Browser alert about invalid ssl certificate.
    SOLUTION: Ensure that test.app.url in your test.properties uses -dot- instead of '.' when using secondary subdomains.
    Eg. http\://4-30    -dot-teammates-john.appspot.com

  1. ERROR: Test cases failed due to accented characters.
    SOLUTION: Ensure that the text file encoding for your Eclipse workspace has been set to UTF-8 as specified under Prerequisites.

  1. ERROR: Error message in the console about ‘incorrect date format’.
    SOLUTION: Ensure the date format of your computer matches the below. For Windows,     this link may be useful.

  1. ERROR: InstructorCourseEnrollPageUiTest fails due to a hash mismatch.
    REASON: The hash of the file in the repo is different from the one used in the live site due to line endings are encoded on different OSes.
    SOLUTION: Replace “    \src\main\webapp\files\Course Enroll Sample Spreadsheet.csv” with this copy of file.

  1. ERROR: "no chromedrive_osx" when testing on Mac using Chrome
    SOLUTION: download the file from     http://chromedriver.storage.googleapis.com/index.html  and extract to /src/test/resources/lib/selenium, then rename it by adding "_osx". Refresh the folder in eclipse.

  1. ERROR:java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError when running on staging server
    SOLUTION: This can happen if you have Java 8 installed on your computer. Change Eclipse configuration to use Java 7 instead. Here is a useful reference     http://java.wildstartech.com/Java-Platform-Standard-Edition/mac-os-x-java-development/how-to-configure-eclipse-to-run-with-java-7-when-java-8-is-installed

  1. ERROR: InstructorCourseDetailsPageUiTest fails in production server due to Gmail’s access restriction (e.g javax.mail.AuthenticationFailedException)
    SOLUTION: “Allow access for less secure apps” for the accounts used in that particular test. As doing so will leave the accounts more vulnerable to security issues, it is strongly recommended that the access is revoked after the test passes. Check     https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/6010255?hl=en for reference.

Errors specific to Linux

1. ERROR: java.io.IOException: Directory ‘/tmpfiles’ could not be created

    SOLUTION: Specify an additional parameter, -Djava.io.tmpdir, in the VM arguments for the tests' run configurations. Add "-Djava.io.tmpdir=/path/to/teammates/tmp". The 'tmp' folder in the specified directory needs to be created before running the tests.