Fwd: Beta Testing KDE-Telepathy

Wed Apr 11 10:27:41 UTC 2012

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Anne-Marie Mahfouf <annemarie.mahfouf at free.fr>
Date: Mon, Apr 9, 2012 at 10:33
Subject: Re: Beta Testing KDE-Telepathy
To: David Edmundson <david at davidedmundson.co.uk>, kde-testing at kde.org

Hi,

Telepathy is a collection of several components, how are they all
connected? (It does not seem very easy to build them from git, I can't
even find telepathy-qt4package for my OpenSuse 11.4... so I now
understand your comments about people having broken installations). We
need enough testers with the whole thing installed correctly: do you
think this is realistic?

For a mini-scaled-test on Telepathy we need:
- setup starting date -> have an IRC open week-end to get people started.
- make tarballs available to packagers and notify them so they can
package it for their distro, 3 or 4 days before
- prepare a wiki page explaining what the testing consist of: propose
very informal testing and propose as well more structured testing.
should the testing be separated into components?

Devels work before the test phase:
=> update wikis
- update http://community.kde.org/Real-Time_Communication_and_Collaboration/Packaging_Guide
for packagers so they can make their packages from the tarball
- have a techbase page explaining how to build from the tarballs for
testers without distro packages
- is there a Userbase page to explain how the various components work?
we need a page for users that testers would read before testing so
they know what each component is supposed to do. As well as the
corresponding bugzilla product.

Anne-Marie

On 04/08/2012 10:08 PM, David Edmundson wrote:
>
> On Sun, Apr 8, 2012 at 8:43 PM, Anne-Marie Mahfouf
> <annemarie.mahfouf at free.fr>  wrote:
>
>> On 04/08/2012 06:16 PM, David Edmundson wrote:
>>>
>>> Given that this the KDE Quality group is a new project it's going to
>>> have a few quirks and a lot where we're not really sure what we're
>>> doing.
>>>
>>> As a possibly completely controversial idea, we could have a trial of
>>> an organised of the beta testing program on a much smaller scale. (a
>>> beta of the beta testing?)
>>>
>>> The KDE Telepathy team is planning a release in late May, so we will
>>> be in a beta testing period between late April and mid May, just
>>> before KDE 4.9 makes its first beta release. It seems like a good
>>> opportunity to try out this new structured beta testing.
>>>
>>> We can test whether it all works in practice, whether we get lots of
>>> common questions that need to go on a wiki, whether the reporting
>>> quality is any good, or any other issues we haven't thought of. My
>>> immediate concerns is that the developers will spend all their time
>>> helping people getting set up (which I know is one of your things to
>>> solve), and that bug reporters will spend their entire time filing
>>> longterm wishlist items and big rewrite ideas that aren't the sort of
>>> thing that should be fixed in a beta testing phase.
>>>
>>> This would all be on a much smaller scale so it's less important if it
>>> doesn't run smoothly so I think it would be a good learning
>>> opportunity for the kde-testing team, as well as obviously useful for
>>> us who get some more beta testing out of it.
>>>
>>> It's something I'd want to run anyway, and it seems like a good
>>> opportunity to involve you, but it's purely an idea/offer.
>>>
>>> Dave
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Kde-testing mailing list
>>> Kde-testing at kde.org
>>> https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-testing
>>
>> A few questions:
>> - release late of May: what will be available during beta phase: tarballs?
>> distro packages?
>
> So far, (in the last 3 releases) we've not done any tarballs for an
> official beta, though this can change. We also have an up-to-date Suse
> studio, and used to have a Ubuntu PPA of git master.
>
>
>> - you say the devels will spend time to help install: this should not
>> happen. We don't want to drain nor the devels nor the potential helpers by
>> stuff difficult to install. Clear instructions shoudl be written before the
>> testing phase for people to install the software.
>
> It's something that I think we're going to face with KDE4.9 testing
> too. People come up with their own incredibly ingenious (broken)
> setups, then expect you to fix it. Anyway, this is getting off topic.
> I've already seen discussion on "how to deploy testing" and this
> belongs there.
>
>> - when you suggest testing, is it informal beta testing (the user installs
>> the software and uses it as he wishes, reporting problems on IRC and on
>> bugzilla when relevant)?  Testers should know what the software is meant to
>> do and how to use it roughly and then go from there. Wild wishes should not
>> be part of testing. We can help testers by providing a list of points to
>> check if we want to keep more control. We can add manual UI checking as well
>> which can be prepared beforehand.
>>
> I'm proposing just informal testing, but to a large part I'm saying
> "what testing do you want to do? - have a go on us first".
> Then my team can give some feedback on what did and didn't work before
> you try on 4.9.
>
>
>> So this will require preparation from your team and availability of the
>> devels but as you said it would be a good go on a small scale if the points
>> above are clear.
>
> Absolutely, we'd have to do quite a few things differently to what we
> have been doing, but we're a very young and dynamic team so that
> shouldn't be a problem.
>
>
>> Anne-Marie
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Kde-testing mailing list
>> Kde-testing at kde.org
>> https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-testing

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