Hi OpenELIS Community! 
I’m Rakesh Honawad, a GSoC 2026 applicant actively
contributing to OpenELIS Global 2. Over the past 3 weeks
I’ve submitted several PRs focused on improving unit and
integration test coverage across multiple service classes.
I wanted to share my learnings, blockers I hit, and ask
some questions that came up during the process.
My Active PRs
| PR | Service | Description |
|---|---|---|
| #3208 | InventoryItemService | 10 new integration tests |
| #3194 | AnalysisService | 6 improved test cases |
| #3077 | PanelService | Additional integration tests |
| #3037 | RegionService | 4 new test cases |
| #3027 | AnalysisService | Additional unit tests |
| #3023 | AnalysisService | Unit tests for getAnalysisType, getStatusId, getTriggeredReflex |
Total: 25+ new unit and integration tests added across
4 service classes in 3 weeks.
What I Learned
1. Always run mvn spotless:apply before committing
I learned this the hard way when @mozzy11 flagged
formatting issues on PR #3023. Now it’s the first
thing I do before every commit.
2. assertNotNull on a primitive boolean is meaningless
On PR #3194, Copilot review caught that assertNotNull
on a boolean always passes due to autoboxing. Should
use assertTrue/assertFalse with known fixture data instead.
3. BaseDAOImpl.get() returns null for missing IDs
I initially wrote a test expecting ObjectNotFoundException
for invalid IDs, but the base DAO simply returns null.
Important to understand base class behaviour before
writing tests.
4. @After tearDown pattern requires setLastupdated()
In RegionServiceTest, the tearDown calls deleteAll()
which requires lastupdated to be set on each entity
first. Missing this caused issues with test cleanup.
5. Rebase pulls in workflow files requiring PAT
workflow scope
After rebasing on develop, pushing was rejected because
workflow files were picked up. Fix is to add workflow
scope to your GitHub Personal Access Token settings
at Sign in to GitHub · GitHub
6. Hard-coded IDs like get(“1”) are brittle
Copilot review on #3194 pointed out that hard-coded
primary keys break if dataset changes. Better to use
existing fixture helpers like createDemoAnalysis()
or select by stable attributes.
Questions for the Community
Q1: E2E failures unrelated to code changes
On multiple PRs (#3037, #3077, #3194, #3208) the
E2E pipeline fails with:
“Unable to download artifact: e2e-image-map-base”
“Unable to download artifact: e2e-plugin-jars”
My PRs only modify test files with zero production
code changes. Backend and Frontend pass
successfully on all of them.
Is there a way for contributors to distinguish
infrastructure CI failures from code-related ones?
A label or wiki note would really help new
contributors not panic!
Q2: Known bug in InventoryItemDAOImpl.getByItemType()
While writing tests for InventoryItemService (PR #3208)
I found that getByItemType() throws:
“ERROR: operator does not exist: character varying = bytea”
This appears to be a PostgreSQL type mismatch bug in
the production DAO code. I marked the affected tests
as @Ignore with a clear note explaining the bug.
Should I open a separate GitHub issue for this? Happy
to investigate further if it would help.
Q3: Preferred test isolation pattern
For destructive tests like deleteAll(), is @Transactional
rollback preferred over @After cleanup in this codebase?
I noticed existing tests use @After tearDown() pattern —
just want to follow the established convention.
Q4: Multiple PRs for same service
I noticed I have 3 PRs open for AnalysisService (#3023,
#3027, #3194). #3194 contains the most improved version
based on Copilot feedback. Should I close the older ones
and consolidate into #3194? I want to keep things clean
for reviewers.
Request for Review
Would love a review on the following PRs which have
been open for 2-3 weeks:
- #3037 RegionService — rebased and spotless applied
- #3077 PanelService — backend and frontend passing
- #3023 AnalysisService — rebased and spotless applied
Happy to make any changes based on feedback!
Looking forward to contributing more to OpenELIS.
I’m very excited about the GSoC 2026 project ideas
and would love to discuss how I can contribute further
during the program! 
— Rakesh Honawad
GSoC 2026 Applicant
GitHub: Rakesh-honawad (Rakesh Honawad) · GitHub
cc: @herbertyiga @mozzy11 @pmanko