Comparison: pyWinAuto

[AlexBarna]

I am evaluating an automation tool for my team. I am choosing between Python/pyWinAuto (http://pywinauto.openqa.org/) and AutoIt.

We've been using Python here for a long time, so that we prefer a Pythonic solution. The best I can find is pyWinAuto. However, the development seems to be ceased and the community activity is very low.

I don't have experience with AutoIt, but I am very impressive of the features and the size of community. I am still not convinced to use AutoIt due to several considerations below, which I hope that you can help me to clarify.

* UNIT TEST FRAMEWORK. By using Python/pyWinAuto, we can use the builtin unittest module and it can immediately integrated to our CI server. It seems to me that AutoIt doesn't have it ?

* BROWSER AUTOMATION. We need to automate IE, FF, and Chrome. If we use Python, we can use Selenium Python bindings, and use a single script to automate three different browsers. As far as I know, AutoIt only can automate IE (built-in) and FF (?). How does it compare with Selenium ? Chrome support ?

Alex.

[Richard Robertson]

Unit tests are part of a development environment, not the language itself. We may not distribute it, but it might exist somewhere on the internet. If not, you can write it.

AutoIt can access nearly any external tool through the use of dll calls. It can automate Internet Explorer and Firefox using library functions that are available in the installer and on the forums. I wouldn't be surprised if Chrome had a UDF somewhere on here too.

AutoIt also has a pretty friendly user base. As long as you put forth some effort, we'll help you if you get stuck.