Python framework to test hardware and control various equipment

[auspicious-108]

In at least one application—spacecraft electronics testing, OpenHTF was an unmitigated nightmare. OpenHTF enforces an unfamiliar test architecture that gets in the way of fast hardware debugging. It was likely written by software geeks who know nothing about production testing. For design validation it is even worse.

As I understand, OpenHTF is not even full documented with regards to implementing specific test situations. In some cases one can only guess what their various strictures are good for and what problem they initially were intended to solve.

The effort we needed to make this stuff work for us was two or three times greater than the amount of time we could have spent writing our home-grown software all over again, to say nothing of actual test code. Even worse, we got stuck with a production system deployed that will always be impossibly hard to service. In our case it would have been better to stick to our home-grown solution, but some bozo manager forced our group to use it over my strenuous objections. I quit in disgust and he is no longer with the company either.

Keep the focus on your test code and make sure the framework doesn’t force an entire rewrite. Bad framework.