We (my colleagues) have a messy 12 y.o. mature app that is GUI-based, and the current plan is to add new dialogs & other GUI in WPF, as well as replace some of the older dialogs in WPF as well. At the same time we wish to be able to test that Monster - GUI automation in a maintainable way. Some challenges:
The application is massive.
It constantly gains new features.
It is being changed around (bug fixes, patches).
It has a back end, and a layer in-between. The state of it can get out of whack if you beat it to death.
What we want is:
Some tool that can automate testing of WPF.
auto-discovery of what the inputs and the outputs of the dialog are. An old test should still work if you add a label that does nothing. It should fail, however, if you remove a necessary text field. It would be very nice if the test suite was easy to maintain, if it ran and did not break most of the time.
Every new dialog should be created with testability in mind.
At this point I do not know exactly what I want, so I am marking this as a community wiki. If having to test a huge GUI-based app rings the bell (even if not in WPF), then please share your good, bad and ugly experiences here.
