Question: Why delete all screenshots in a screenshot group?

[mikefogg]

Hey @donv! Excited to get started using this. Seems like it may solve the exact problem we're looking for.

I'm curious, reading over the docs I noticed it says: All files in the screenshot group directory will be deleted when screenshot_group is called..

If it deletes all of the files in a screenshot group when it's called, how can they be used to compare against the new versions? The way I envisioned using screenshot group is like saying, "I want all of these tests to be grouped into a folder like parent/00_child_test.png, parent/01_child_other_test.png, etc.. Then when running that same test with screenshot_group 'parent' and a child test, it would look for that and compare accordingly.

Maybe I'm not understanding groups correctly, but either way I'd love to hear more about why they're deleted when that's called, and the correct way to use groups but still allow for diff comparison.

Thanks!

[donv]

Hi @mikefogg !

Glad to hear you are considering using the gem. I have developed it for my company and my personal use, so all features have had a concrete need.

The images in a group are deleted for cleanup after you change a test. Typically you use one group for one test, and all the screenshots in that test are stored with a sequence number. When the test changes, the sequence changes, so we need to clean up old files. Comparison with the previous version of the same image happens by fetching the previous version of the image from the local GIT repository. That means that you need to commit your screenshot to get a comparison.

A similar feature is the section. A section also adds a path to where the image is stored, but does not add a sequence number to each image, and does not delete all files inside the section. Typically we use one section per test class or topic.

[donv]

I added a section in the README:

Screen shots are compared to the previously COMMITTED version of the same screen shot.

[mikefogg]

Awesome! Thanks for clarifying :) So it looks like we should use section for what I was thinking about (grouping by topic) and group for a specific test. Perfect!

[donv]

Glad to help. Please submit PR with suggestions for the README if you see a way to improve it.