A small selection of user groups we sponsored in the past

Additionally, if you want to present and demonstrate SmartInspect in front of at least 15 attendees at a user group meeting or similar event, please contact us and we are happy to provide you with an extra SmartInspect license.

Learn more: SmartInspect licenses for user groups

Open source teams already use various tools to manage their software development process such as bug trackers, project management tools and source control. Teams can also benefit from a test management software to manage, organize and execute their tests. TestRail allows contributors to participate in projects’ software testing efforts and even enables non-technical users to contribute to projects.

We decided to make free licenses of our test management software available to open source teams as a way to give back to the community. Gurock Software is using various open source projects to power the infrastructure and development process so this makes a lot of sense for us. Interested open source teams can contact us or learn more about the offer on the dedicated web page.

Learn more: Free TestRail licenses for open source projects

Additionally, we wanted to separate DelphiFeeds.com and our blog from our website for performance and security reasons, so we also put those sites on different machines. The good news is that our websites should become a lot faster because of the server move, especially DelphiFeeds.com. If you notice any problems, we would appreciate a quick email.

So as of today, we have our own project hosting website at code.gurock.com. We will use this website to host product-related projects and we invite you to contribute. We are also happy to host your projects if they are related to SmartInspect or TestRail, so feel free to contact us if you are interested in this.

For now there are just two projects on the site: PostSharp for SmartInspect (which will get a major rewrite soon, stay tuned) and a new TestRail mini API (more about this in a later posting). We plan to add other projects to the site in the future and open more of our code for contributions from the community. Enjoy!

code.gurock.com

“Around a year ago we desperately needed a name for the new test management software we had been working on. We aren’t very good with names. In fact, we used a codename for the project until the very last minute, so that we didn’t have to come up with the product name earlier. Still, even with many months to think about a name, it was difficult to find one that we liked.”

Read more in a guest posting I wrote for the Successful Software blog:
How to find a great software product name

.NET 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010 support

Microsoft released Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0 earlier this week. SmartInspect 3.3 now introduces official support for this new version of .NET. To use SmartInspect in .NET 4.0 projects, just add a reference to our updated .NET 2.0 assembly (this assembly is compatible with all .NET versions from 2.0 onwards). We also updated the SmartInspect setup to integrate with the new Visual Studio release. All SmartInspect .NET sample projects also include Visual Studio 2010 project files now.

Display opened log file names

This enhancement has been requested by various SmartInspect users, so we are happy to finally display the opened log file name(s) in the SmartInspect Console. This feature looks easy to implement from the outside, but is a bit tricky as there can be multiple opened log files at once and there is no single way to ‘close’ a log file. SmartInspect will show the currently opened log file in the window’s title bar. If you open multiple log files, the Console will try to display as many log file names as space permits.

New Log Entry ID column

We added a new separate Log Entry ID column to the SmartInspect Console. This column shows a unique serial ID for each log entry, making it easy to find the same log entry in different views. It also comes in handy if you need to point other SmartInspect users to specific log entries in a log file.

TrackMethod & LogEnumerable (.NET only)

We are also introducing a new way to trace methods with SmartInspect’s .NET logging library. While our Delphi logging library had a similar functionality for some time now, TrackMethod now allows you to trace a method with just a single line of code. We use .NET’s dispose mechanism to automatically call LeaveMethod when a method exists. To use TrackMethod, just wrap it into a using statement like this:

class OrderProcessor
{
	public void Process()
	{
		using (SiAuto.Main.TrackMethod(this, "Process"))
		{
			SiAuto.Main.LogMessage("Some message");
		}
	}
}

Using TrackMethod has the same behavior as if you would wrap your methods with try..finally, ensuring that LeaveMethod is called even if an exception is raised.

Additionally, the new LogEnumerable in the SmartInspect .NET logging library makes it easy to log IEnumerable variables.

Getting the new version

Existing customers can download the new SmartInspect release from our customer portal. An updated trial version is available on our website. As usual, you can simply install the new version over your existing installation (there is no need to uninstall the previous version first). For a complete list of changes, please see the online help or our announcement forum.

We also want to thank all testers who participated in TestRail’s beta test. Without your feature suggestions, ideas and bug reports, the 1.0 certainly wouldn’t be what it is today. We’ve got more than 350 beta signups during the beta and are really grateful for all the feedback and emails we’ve received. Thank you! If you participated in the beta test, please check your email inbox for a small TestRail launch present.

When we released the first beta versions of TestRail last August, we didn’t plan for such a long beta phase. We intended to release a few beta versions and release it in November 2009 at the latest. Based on the feedback we received during the beta, however, it became apparent that TestRail would benefit from a few critical enhancement that we wanted to add before the release (such as test plans and configurations, nested sections including drag&drop, print support and importing/exporting).

The feedback during the beta made us confident that a modern and fresh approach to test management is needed and it was great to see that it was so well received by beta testers. There are still a lot of things that didn’t make it into the 1.0 that we want to see in the future of course, but I believe we’ve created a strong foundation for future enhancements and improvements.

We’ve updated TestRail’s website with new screenshots and a product tour as well as pricing details and licensing information. To celebrate the release of TestRail we are offering special introductory prices, so make sure to evaluate TestRail soon if you are interested in the tool. You can download a free and fully-functional trial copy of TestRail from our website.

As usual, the change log and update instructions for this release can be found in our forum. If you have any question about TestRail or this release, just let us know!

We wish all customers, friends and partners happy holidays and a successful new year 2010! We had a great year here at Gurock Software and reached some important milestones such as completing a critical customer project, launching our new website, improving SmartInspect, relaunching DelphiFeeds.com and releasing the first TestRail beta.

Next year will definitely be an interesting (and busy!) one for us and we will start with releasing TestRail in January, moving to a new office (again) and relaunching our customer portal and online shop.

We are looking forward to working with you again next year!