This is a great question since we invest a lot on writing specflow tests internally ...

I've sent a similar question to [email protected] two weeks ago, but I haven't received any response.

I was surprised when I registered for SpecFlow+LivingDoc and received an email on behalf of @SabotageAndi, who has left Tricentis several months ago. Additionally, the SpecFlow Community has also been quiet for a while, with no responses.

We asked @SabotageAndi in the Discord channel what's up with the project several months ago and he indicated he did not know, other than that he moved on and @gasparnagy isn't paid by Tricentis anymore to do work on SpecFlow. LinkedIn pages of several other developers on the SpecFlow team seem to indicate that they have moved on as well in or around March of this year. None of the emails sent to Tricentis were answered thus far.

Not sure what this all means, but it does paint a bleak picture.

Yeah, sorry. I have no clue what Tricentis is doing with SpecFlow. As I wrote on Discord I tried to start a handover of it to other people, but it didn't go anywhere.

I've sent a similar question to [email protected] two weeks ago, but I haven't received any response.

Yeah, I was the last one who monitored that address.

I was surprised when I registered for SpecFlow+LivingDoc and received an email on behalf of @SabotageAndi, who has left Tricentis several months ago.

Thanks for the info. When I left I told them to change that. I will remind them again to do that.

I have still some friends at Tricentis. I will contact them. Perhaps they can nudge the people in charge to say something.

Many people, teams and projects use SpecFlow, including my own projects, so I don't think we have to worry about the future existence of it.

I think it is rather the timing and the way of handling is unclear.

SpecFlow is an open-source project, but Tricentis owns the branding (domain name, nuget package keys, logos, etc.), so drastic actions, like forking would require to rename the project which is not very convinient for the people. But this is possible and I will make it if necessary.

In a few weeks (when people are back from vacation) I will start again somehow finding a person at Tricentis who can provide any info on their plans and based on the result we will find a solution. (If you feel like you can help in this, please send me a message.)

Nevertheless it is good to know that many people caring about the product. Please hold on, and feel free to share your thoughts here.

@gasparnagy just wanted to say your update is very welcome! SpecFlow is a great library, and I'd hate to see it die due to neglect by Tricentis (especially when the source code is right here!)

Very interested in any progress you make 🙂

Thanks to both yourself and @SabotageAndi for your continued support and interaction with the community. It's very much appreciated!

This thread is just what I was looking for! Our organization is looking to take a quick jump to .Net7 and then to .NET 8 soon. I would hate to have to remove the functionality of Specflow from our test implemenation. @gasparnagy We all look forward to any updates you might be able to find!

Any updates on this @gasparnagy ? I would greatly appreciate your efforts if you could get a 'proof of life' etc

I was trying to collect further adwises on how to proceed, and I think I am ready to move on. I will come up with a proposal draft with @SabotageAndi and send it to Tricentis in a few days. I will keep you updated.

I had a call with Tricentis today and we've discussed the status of the project. They are now going to check the options to bring more activity to the project and we continue the discussion in ~2w time. The discussion was positive and I'm pretty sure it will lead to a good outcome. I will keep you informed.

I will keep you informed.

The next meeting with Tricentis is scheduled for 9th October.

Our team "hitched our wagon" to SpecFlow and is hopeful for it's future. Thanks @gasparnagy and @SabotageAndi !

@gasparnagy: It's been a week since your meeting. Is there any news?

@genne5 They did not show up in the meeting... :( I've tried to reschedule it with no success so far.

Disappointing. Do we have any idea what Tricentis thoughts are at this time?

@Code-Grump I agree. I don't have a clear view on what is happening, have some ideas, but only speculation...

Well SpecFlow doesn't drive revenue for Tricentis. They've also dropped it from many of their recent presentations where they show off their other [profitable] solutions.

Update: I've got a new appointment for the 24th Oct.

Was the meeting successful this time?

Update: We had the meeting yesterday evening. They informed me (us) that now the awareness has been raised that they need to act to keep the project in healthy state. They currently considering different options on how this should happen, but this should be also decided within a few weeks.

We also discussed that whatever the chosen option will be, they will also consider what temporary/immediate steps are required until the selected solution is implemented. For this I started to make a list, that currently looks like this. Please feel free to comment here if anything else should be added.

• Make sure that the build system works
• Release v4.0 (with the current state, maybe fix critical issues if threre are any, see below)
• Triage issues and pull requests created recently (e.g. this year) and classify them accordingly.

If you have any open issue that is related to the SpecFlow v4.0 beta release and you think it must be considered before release, please also comment here.

I've been looking to get this feature included into the next major version of SpecFlow for some time: #1983

Thanks so much for the info Gaspar and keeping all of us up to date. That definitely sounds like a great place to start - any activity at this point is certainly welcome.

I'll throw my own selfish plug though - Scenario level parallel exec is definitely a big one for us:
#2225

That is great news, thanks again @gasparnagy !

Thank you for the update @gasparnagy, much appreciated

@jrod567 The scenario-level parallel access is a valid topic, but that one is a bigger chunk, so I would not delay releasing v4.0 for that. We can ask to prioritize that once the things are rolling. But I will keep that in mind anyway.

@gasparnagy First of all, I would like to thank you for supporting the users of specflow community.

From my perspectives, below issues can be considered to use powerful specflow+ runner.

• Support specflow+ runner with latest .NET version. Currently it works only with .NET Core 5.0
• Resolve issues with using Selenium Manager & specflow+ runner in tests. Currently Selenium Manager fails here.

Any updates for us @gasparnagy?

Any updates for us @gasparnagy?

I hope to get some updates within a few weeks.

Just wondering if they expect an AI to replace SpecFlow.

Any updates @gasparnagy ?

Note to self: We would also need soon:

• Cucumber Expression support for the Rider SpecFlow plugin
• Cucumber Expression and Rule support in LivingDoc generator
• Make LivingDoc generator work with more recent .NET versions

Hi @gasparnagy!

As for LivingDoc generator a suggestion, in addition to this note of a v4 for work with more recent .NET versions, would be to support the view of the rule in the html report

Let me begin by saying, thank you Tricentis & the software developers who have worked on SpecFlow.

Also a big thank you to @gasparnagy for all that you have done. Much appreciated.

Our organization started using SpecFlow approximately a year ago, and we see value in this testing approach. With respect to the road map moving forward my vote would be:

• Release SpecFlow so that it compiles against the latest release of .NET Core.
  • If nothing else, do this please.

Thank you for your patience and support. This is a big day.

Please, welcome Reqnroll, the fork of SpecFlow that is aiming to reboot this valuable open-source project!

Public announcement of Reqnroll

There is a lot to say… I tried to describe as much as I can in the announcement, but please ask.

And most importantly: this is just the beginning… I'm really counting on you to make it successful. Let's req 🤘!

@gasparnagy This is absolutely great news and incredible timing for us! We appreciate all of your work in moving forward and we are going to add it to a branch of our current solutions to test out.

Fantastic news Gasparnagy!! Really looking forward to this!

Great news!!! Thanks Gaspar!!

Big day! We appreciate your commitment to maintaining this incredible tool, used in great products, it is the pillar of our quality strategy! By being compatible with LivingDocs on Azure, I will be ready to migrate and contribute my experience in processes and BDD to support the tool's evolution! Success @gasparnagy !

Time to recreate an issue and start work on resolving it I guess!

Awesome..! thanks so much @gasparnagy
We were at the verge of deciding to go with BDD or without, and LivingDoc's .Net 6.0 support is a decision influencer.
This is great news!

#2591 is still open.

Is SpecMap also open source, and if so does anyone know where the codebase for that is please?

SpecMap is open source from what I see.. https://docs.specflow.org/_/downloads/specmap/en/latest/pdf/

No, SpecMap is not opensource

Is SpecFlow Officially closed ? How stable is the SpecFlow v4 if it is not officially dead.

As many projects / companies are forcing to migrate to the latest version of .Net (.Net 8). Worried that upgrading might break the existing implementations which is built around .Net 6.

I'd seriously consider moving to reqnroll. Specflow is going nowhere.

Is SpecFlow Officially closed ? How stable is the SpecFlow v4 if it is not officially dead.

As many projects / companies are forcing to migrate to the latest version of .Net (.Net 8). Worried that upgrading might break the existing implementations which is built around .Net 6.

Only Tricentis can say this. As far as I know they didn't react at all on the Reqnroll fork.

Wasted a few hours trying to fix a bug.... then reading this thread...

Who is stearing Tricentis :-(

Wasted a few hours trying to fix a bug.... then reading this thread...

This must be mentioned in the readme.

Wasted a few hours trying to fix a bug.... then reading this thread...

This must be mentioned in the readme.

Sadly nobody with commit permissions is interesting in updating the readme...

Wasted a few hours trying to fix a bug.... then reading this thread...

Who is stearing Tricentis :-(

LinkedIn is your friend.

Who is stearing Tricentis :-(

LinkedIn is your friend.

Thanks. I did send Kevin Thompson, CEO of Tricentis, a message. Won't help I guess and probably too late.

Wasted a few hours trying to fix a bug.... then reading this thread...

Who is stearing Tricentis :-(

I am curious what bug you were trying to fix though :)

I am curious what bug you were trying to fix though :)

This one I think: #1965 with version 4 packages. Generator was trying to load version 3.9 specflow dll