Version 30 of the stb-tester core Python API is available. stbt.match now supports transparency: Transparent pixels in the reference image will be ignored when looking for a match within the video-frame. This is a huge usability improvement when looking for buttons, selections/highlights, and similar outlines that have dynamic content or non-rectangular shapes.

The run-time environment of the test scripts has also been upgraded from Ubuntu 14.04 to Ubuntu 18.04. This means that any third-party packages that you install with apt install will be upgraded too.

In particular, Tesseract (the engine used by stbt.ocr) has been upgraded to version 4.0. Overall the OCR accuracy should improve slightly, but there may be regressions or differences in behaviour in some cases.

As always, changes to the stbt core Python API and the Ubuntu run-time environment are version-controlled. You can specify the version you want to use in your stbt.conf file. This allows you to upgrade in a controlled manner, and to test the upgrade on a branch first.

This release also contains many other improvements and bug-fixes. For full details see the v30 release notes.