starlark VS Robot Framework

The implementations and users page mentioned above:

https://github.com/bazelbuild/starlark/blob/master/users.md

Starlark: Starlark is a language for describing build transformations, inspired by Python, but with features that make it suitable for embedding in software like Bazel. It can be used for configuration generation due to its capability for deterministic evaluation and expressing complex build transformations.

In the design of Starlark (https://github.com/bazelbuild/starlark), I often had to push back against new feature requests to keep the language simple. I explicitly listed simplicity as a design goal.i

Of course, the scope of the language is not the same as general purpose languages, but there's always pressure from the users to add more things. I also think many people underestimate the cost of adding new features: it's not just about adding the code in every compiler/interpreter, specifying every edge-case in a spec, updating all the tooling for the language and writing tutorials; it's also a cost on everyone who will have to read any of the code.

one of the benefits of starlark (unlike python): "Starlark is suitable for use in highly parallel applications. An application may invoke the Starlark interpreter concurrently from many threads, without the possibility of a data race, because shared data structures become immutable due to freezing." from https://github.com/bazelbuild/starlark/blob/master/spec.md - it's not python, you can't do recursion (!) and it's more limited (you can't read a file in bazel, and parse it, you have to make this operation into the graph somehow)

You can do the same in Bazel which uses Starlark for its BUILD files. Starlark is a dialect of Python so it makes it super easy to work with.

Make sense. We do not use Python actually, the build language is starlark, which is the config lang used by bazel. https://github.com/bazelbuild/starlark

Have you seen Starlark? It's not too far from that, but safer in a number of ways: https://github.com/bazelbuild/starlark

Well, I work with software quality and despite not having a strong foundation in automation, one fine day I decided to make a change. I have been working with Robot Framework for a few months - and that's when I got a taste of the power of python. Some time later, I dabbled a little with Cypress and Playwright, always using javascript.

Robot Framework

I've used Lua/Busted in a data-heavy environment (telemetry from hospital ventilators). I've also used robot: https://robotframework.org/

I can't say whether any of these will work, but maybe one of: PyAutoGui pytest-qt Robot Framework + plugins

I'm looking for tools, strategies, libraries, etc. that would be useful for automating arbitrary desktop applications. Ideally something free and open source. Robot Framework (https://robotframework.org/) looks promising, although the docs seem deliberately unclear about how useable the open source libraries are without the cloud SaaS being sold on top.

Does anyone have experience in this area? What's your secret sauce for robust desktop automations?

In the industry I've seen the framework "Robot framework" https://robotframework.org/ used a lot for test automation.

Check out Robot Framework @ https://robotframework.org/

Greetings! They say all good things must come to an end, and with this post, so it is with my series of posts covering Robot Framework.