Centralize your Robot Framework Installation

The Robot Framework (http://code.google.com/p/robotframework/) is a very nice tool for doing test automation. But the installation can sometimes become a bit messy if Python, Jython, the Robot Framework and a numer of test libraries need to be kept in sync for a bigger (or even a smaller) team of developers and/or testers.

A solution to this can be the use of the JAR-distribution of the Robot Framework. This can be downloaded from the Robot Framework download pages here: http://code.google.com/p/robotframework/downloads/list

The good thing in using the JAR-distribution is the possibility to easily add additional test libraries to its directory structure. This works even for pre-compiled Python libraries. This way it is for example easy to add the Selenium Library, which is for sure one of the Libraries that is used most often with the Robot Framework.

After packing everything in one JAR this can be distributed to all users via low-tech (network drive) or by some packaging delivery system or maybe even using an available SCM system (Subversion, Git).

This approach does not only spare time for all team members to keep installations up-to-date, but it is easier to ensure all team members are really working with the same version of all the tools. In addition this allows to easily keep versions that have been used at a certain point of time, just in case there is a need to test older software versions with older versions of test libraries (for whatever reason).