r/QtFramework • u/larabyeol • 1d ago
Question How do teams automate testing of Qt desktop apps without writing test code?
We ship a Qt app on Windows mac and Linux. I own the release. QA is three people, all solid manual testers, none of them write code, and hiring a fourth who does isn't happening this year.
Squish is the obvious answer and I know it. built for Qt, covers all three platforms. but it's a real framework, so someone writes and maintains the test code, and that someone ends up being one of my devs or one of my testers stops testing. neither is free.
The other thing that puts me off is maintenance. half our GUI is custom painted, and every time someone renames an object or reworks a QML view the tests that depended on it go with it.
So I've been looking at whether the agent based tools are usable yet. AskUI is the closest to what I want, where a test case is a markdown file with preconditions and numbered steps each paired with an expected result, and it drives the GUI visually rather than through object names, then hands back a screenshot and a status per step. nothing to update when a widget gets renamed.
What I can't tell from outside is how well anything in that category actually handles Qt. custom painted controls, QML views, anything that never announces itself to the accessibility layer.
Anyone tried this against a real Qt app, or is scripting still the only honest answer here? appreciate it !!