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Posted March 9, 2023

Shift-Left Faster Testing with Linux VMs

For development teams aspiring to adopt shift-left testing, using Linux VMs can provide a secure and robust environment without the cost.

As testing organizations continue to focus on becoming more agile and competitive, the phrase “shift-left” has grown predominant in the testing market. Shift-left means testing earlier in the development cycle rather than at the very end so that bugs can be detected and fixed sooner in the process.

While the concept of testing earlier during development is not new for most testers, changing testing practices has proven to be difficult. For example, organizations can implement a shift-left strategy by thinking about testing their applications at early stages of development. But the main challenge is how to do this.

Depending on what kind of applications your team is testing and what kind of solution you are looking for, using a lite compute level that provides a more bare bones testing environment could be the answer to helping your team adopt shift-left testing.

In 2020, Stack Overflow’s Developer Survey revealed 55% of professional developers are using Linux, making it even more popular than Windows. Since Sauce Labs has noticed that many of our customers do not have a specified OS for testing, we invested in Linux VMs that are lite and scalable for shift-left testing. The Linux VMs also provide our customers with the opportunity to test in headless mode as well.

We are currently running a Linux Beta until April 1, 2023, and would like customer feedback. If your development team would like to try out the beta, here’s how to enroll:

How to Start Testing

Enrollment will begin on February 10, 2023.
After submitting the signup form, we will process your request and send an email confirmation when you have successfully enrolled in the Linux Beta.
Start Testing!
1. The CCY available per user in the Early Access program is limited to 10 CCY
2. Ensure your platform name is set to “Linux Beta”

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from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options as ChromeOptions
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options = ChromeOptions()
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options.headless = True #this is optional -only if you want headless
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options.platform_name = "Linux Beta"

Testing in Headless Mode

You can test in headless mode using the headless arg that is built into webdriver options. Python example for running Chrome browser test in headless mode:

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from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options as ChromeOptions
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options = ChromeOptions()
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options.platform_name = "Linux Beta"

Testing with Tunnels

If you require Sauce Connect tunnels for your testing, you need to add the feature flag --vm-version v2alpha3 when starting your tunnel

DevOps teams need to develop and release apps faster than ever before to meet the demands of today's consumers. Sauce Labs helps DevOps teams evolve their testing processes so they can develop, update, and release high-quality web and mobile apps quickly.

Request a demo of Sauce Labs and get started with shift-left testing today.

Published:

Mar 9, 2023