Download procedure

[onnolippett]

We are three students from the Vrije Universiteit who tried to download the FitNesse application. We found it very difficult and incomprehensible on what to do to get the program running, even with the use of your download tutorial. We have little knowledge in coding so maybe that is why we were not able to download it. But since FitNesse is also for managers with little coding knowledge, they should also be able to download it. Hence, we suggest explaining the downloading procedure more simplified as it could broaden your target group.

[fhoeben]

You are right that better getting started instructions would be great.
But just downloading is not getting you anything much. FitNesse, once configured and setup, can also provide insight to feature availability and code quality to managers. But I would not see them as a target audience for downloading FitNesse.

Once downloaded it will have to be installed, fixtures coded (coupling the wiki to the system being tested) and wiki pages written before any test can be run.

Some ready made fixtures and descriptions/projects to make getting started with FitNesse easier exist (see for instance the Plugins page). But I believe you still need developers, or test automation specialists, to get started. I wish it could be simpler (and even made my own add-on open source project to facilitate the process). And getting started is just the start: writing and maintaining automated tests is development work which takes quite serious effort. It's valuable (maybe even invaluable) as part of a professional product configuration/development effort, but not just a question of running through an easy download procedure and you're done.

So if you see ways to contribute to making getting started (and understanding what you'll be getting) easier, please do. But just easier instructions will not make FitNesse accessible (or valuable) to all.

[fhoeben]

I have my own 'getting started' description on https://github.com/fhoeben/hsac-fitnesse-fixtures/releases that allows one to get an up-and-running FitNesse environment with some website and service tests and framework to write your own tests just to try it out (by just downloading a single .zip, extracting it and running with Java you get FitNesse with a set of fixtures and sample tests).

If you like what you see, https://github.com/fhoeben/hsac-fitnesse-fixtures/wiki/Installation-Guide gives a more detailed instruction how to setup a development environment to really start work on your own automated test suite.

Suggestions/contributions to make these better are also more than welcome.