Katalon is slow to execute tests cases on MAC

[anon46315158]

@ashraf.madina

then you can imagine the chrome instances eats up some memory too

The other half, because Chrome is special also

[anon46315158]

@ashraf.madina see my thoughts on:

It is that classic debate again - MacOS vs Windows

@albert.vu kindly read my further replies, where I was mentioning that I was trolling and provided further advice. For that topic, yes, mac was crap at first look. Sue me! Balcanic humour. So I hope will not be a civil war, but flame cannot be avoided. But yeah, worth a debate, since each and every platform has particularities, with pro and cons. From my side, as the comunity already knows, I am a linux promotter as it gives me the most flexibility: it is free as in free beer it is mostly…

and feel free to bring your own opinion.
The war has started!

[ashraf.madina]

I hate Mac myself… it’s cute and sexy to look at. Makes you look cool like carrying a teacup puppy on your waist as fashion statement. But if you want a system that doesn’t make your day miserable, windows wins.
Unfortunately, I chose to be cool and wanted to get the same machine as rest of our dev guys… so here’s to wearing 4" heels and carrying a puppy at the expense of comfort.

[kazurayam]

On my M1 MacBook Air with 8GB RAM, Katalon Studio v8.6.8 runs fast enough.

@ashraf.madina

I hate Mac myself…

Why not you buy a new scarely fast MacBook?

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/24/tech/apple-october-event-2023/index.html

I guess and hope, a new machine might resolve your slowness problem.

[duyluong]

I recommend using Mac pro with 16 GB of RAM to get the better experience with Katalon Studio. Mac Air ARM is fine but it should have at least 16 GB of RAM.

[atul.rai]

@a.bluteau - the release of Katalon Studio 9.0.0 is available , you can try and see execution time are faster up to 25%

[aalikinfo89]

Katalon’s slow test case execution on macOS may be due to various factors, such as system performance, test complexity, or resource allocation. Troubleshooting specific issues is recommended.aalikinfo

[ashraf.madina]

i don’t think the company is going to switch everyone to a 16gb mac. In a regular chrome browser, everything is normal. no lag, slowness. As soon as the test runs on katalon chrome instances… it is sluggish as hell. It was slow for looong time…but i think as Katalon went thru updates, it has become really sluggish now. It’s not that bad on my windows device…which has more space…but my work device is Mac. I think there’s something more than just memory and cpu issue here… but will see if there’s any difference in v9.0

[anon46315158]

@ashraf.madina

i don’t think the company is going to switch everyone to a 16gb mac.

so, wipe out OSX and install Linux on it. will work like a rocket!
aside of that, i doubt that only Katalon creates the issues on Mac.
As advised try also to install Chrome clean or whatever browser you may use.
and whatever else.
For some users (e.g. @kazurayam) it works just fine. for some not … so at this moment we cannot fully blame mac, nor katalon, nor anything else.
we can only troll!

[duyluong]

Katalon Studio v9 introduce mac ARM support so you can try that version. If your computer is slow, please observe Task Monitor to see any process that affects Katalon Studio.

But again, Macbook Air (or even Macbook Pro) with 8gb of RAM only allow you to do basic stuffs

[kazurayam]

Environment:

• MacBook Air, Apple M1 Chip, 8GB memory, macOS 12.7

I used the Sample WebUI test project “Healthcare”. I executed the following:

• healthcare-tests/Test Suites/healthcare-tests - TS_RegressionTestCollection.ts at master · katalon-studio-samples/healthcare-tests · GitHub

using Katalon Studio.app (v8.6.8)

2023-10-28 09:23:31.976 INFO  c.k.katalon.core.main.TestSuiteExecutor  - START Test Suites/healthcare-tests - TS_RegressionTest
...
2023-10-28 09:24:59.711 INFO  c.k.katalon.core.main.TestSuiteExecutor  - END Test Suites/healthcare-tests - TS_RegressionTest
2023-10-28 09:24:59.711 INFO  c.k.katalon.core.main.TestSuiteExecutor  - ====================

It took 87.707 seconds.

using Katalon Studio Arm64.app (v9.0.0)

2023-10-28 09:51:16.766 INFO  c.k.katalon.core.main.TestSuiteExecutor  - START Test Suites/healthcare-tests - TS_RegressionTest
...
2023-10-28 09:52:00.447 INFO  c.k.katalon.core.main.TestSuiteExecutor  - END Test Suites/healthcare-tests - TS_RegressionTest
2023-10-28 09:52:00.447 INFO  c.k.katalon.core.main.TestSuiteExecutor  - ====================

It took 43.664 seconds.

Discussion

My experiment showed that v8.6.8 took 88 seconds. Katalon Studio Arm64 (v9.0.0) took 43 seconds. This experiment proved that Katalon Studio Arm (v9.0.0) is much faster than v8.6.8 on a mac with M1 chip.

For your interest …

On mac with M1 chip, a Katalon test suite runs slower on Katalon Studio v8.x than Katalon Studio Arm64 (v9.0.0). But why? Any reason?

Katalon Studio v8.6.8 is built as a x86-64-based application software. On mac with Apple silicon chip, v8.6.8 run on top of a emulation layer named Rosseta 2. The Rosseta 2 provides an X86-inteface to the application. The “x86-64 to Arm64” instruction translation makes the application run slow. Now Katalon Studio Arm64.app is released, which is compiled native to Apple silicon chip. Katalon Studio Arm64.app v9.0 runs without the Rosseta 2 layer. So it runs much faster than v8.6.8.

[ashraf.madina]

This was the difference in KSE 8.6 vs KS ARM v9
32 min vs. 10 min for teh same test execution on my MAC with 8gb RAM

KS v8

KS v9

[kazurayam]

@ashraf.madina

@ashraf.madina

I hate Mac myself

Do you still hate it?

[ashraf.madina]

still do. still faster on windows (among other things) lol. Automation in Safari is horrendous if not obsolete. That’s another reason.

[anon46315158]

@ashraf.madina

Automation in Safari is horrendous if not obsolete. That’s another reason.

why do that? all Mac users I know are not using safari at all.
So, at least in my opinion, is obsolete.

[ashraf.madina]

we don’t since we can’t. it would be nice to have some coverage on safari browser for our app. About 40% of our end-users uses Safari.

[anon46315158]

that suck. badly. but oh well, this the life of a QA engineer.
been in such position, so I understand your pain.
sometime, ‘metrics’ beat common sense…