Web app karma tests are flaky

[tmetzke]

Acceptance Criteria (Required on creation)

• Web app Karma test stages are either stabilized or removed from the CI if their value is not high enough.

Hints

• The value of the tests is limited, they are unit tests for the web app UI and easily break.
• We have unit tests for the web apps backend as well as E2E tests for the UI parts of the web apps.

Links

Breakdown

Pull Requests

Beta Give feedback

1. https://github.com/camunda/camunda-bpm-platform-ee/pull/848

[tmetzke]

@tasso94, please assess the value of the Karma tests and decide whether we want to stabilize or remove them in the long run.

[tasso94]

Context

• Unit tests are easy to write and maintain with stable API and when doing black box tests.
  • We are developing a web application with no stable API (the most stable API is the User Interface itself which we test through E2E tests) – whenever introducing new features or refactoring code, the unit tests break and must be maintained.
• We didn't introduce new karma tests for at least seven years.
• Tests should be a safety net for developers to ensure that changes don't break existing behavior and to reduce bugs.
  • This is not the case for these tests; they usually break while refactoring code but don't uncover actual problems.
• Our E2E test suite uncovers more problems and is a real developer's safety net.
• The unit tests are flaky.

Decision

Let's remove the karma unit tests since they don't bring any value; maintaining them is unjustified extra effort.