Installation

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Spectre is currently 0.1.0-SNAPSHOT and isn't published to Maven Central or any other public repository. The Gradle build also doesn't apply maven-publish, so ./gradlew publishToMavenLocal is not a working path either. Until a tagged release lands, the supported way to consume Spectre is as a Gradle composite build (includeBuild) — see below. Once releases start, this page will be updated with artifact coordinates.

Requirements

• JDK 21 or newer. JBR 21 is the project's dev-loop default; JBR 25 is exercised via the IDE-hosted UI test. Any JDK 21+ works for the non-IDE modules.
• A Compose Desktop or Compose Multiplatform (desktop target) application. Spectre reads Compose's semantics tree, so the UI under test must be a real Compose surface.
• Platform-specific recording dependencies if you plan to use the recording module — see Recording for the per-OS prerequisites.

Consume as a composite build

Clone Spectre next to the project that wants to use it:

git clone https://github.com/rock3r/spectre.git

In the consuming project's settings.gradle.kts, include Spectre's checkout as a composite build:

includeBuild("../spectre")

In the consuming project's build.gradle.kts, depend on the modules you need by project coordinates — Gradle resolves them against the included build:

dependencies {
    testImplementation("dev.sebastiano.spectre:core")
    testImplementation("dev.sebastiano.spectre:testing")

    // optional, depending on what you need:
    testImplementation("dev.sebastiano.spectre:recording")
    testImplementation("dev.sebastiano.spectre:server")
}

Versions are intentionally omitted: includeBuild substitutes the project dependency into the consumer's classpath using whatever version the included build declares, so the 0.1.0-SNAPSHOT you see in gradle.properties is implicit.

If you depend on server, you also need to add a Ktor server engine yourself — Spectre intentionally doesn't bundle one. See Cross-JVM access for the choice.

You also need the JUnit version that matches the wrapper you'll use:

JUnit 5JUnit 4

dependencies {
    testImplementation("org.junit.jupiter:junit-jupiter:5.10.0")
}

dependencies {
    testImplementation("junit:junit:4.13.2")
}

The testing module declares both JUnit dependencies as compileOnly, so consumers pick whichever they're already using.

Modules at a glance

Module	What it gives you
core	ComposeAutomator, semantics tree reader, selectors, RobotDriver for input.
testing	ComposeAutomatorExtension (JUnit 5), ComposeAutomatorRule (JUnit 4).
recording	Region and window-targeted screen capture (AutoRecorder, FfmpegRecorder, …).
server	Embedded HTTP transport (Ktor) and HttpComposeAutomator for cross-JVM access.

Most projects only need core + testing. Add recording if you want video output for test runs, and server if your test process needs to reach a UI in a different JVM.

Next

Continue to Getting started for a worked example.