Krita Testing Day #1: Thursday, January 7th, 2020

[Emmet O'Neill]

Hey there. I'm writing to let everybody know that we're having our first *Krita
Testing Day* this *Thursday, January 7th*.
The official start time is 20:00 CET, but because we're a global community
with different work schedules this is an *all day, flexible schedule* event.

-----

*1. What's this all about?*

Hand-on testing is a huge part of successful development; it helps to
assess the current strengths and weaknesses of the program from the
perspective of our users, discover obvious bugs and regressions before
release, and gain insights that will help us plan what comes next.

But while big companies have dedicated QA teams, free and open source
projects like Krita rely mainly on their community volunteers to submit the
bug reports and feature requests that indirectly drive development.
This comes at two key disadvantages: (1) we're unlikely to find out about
problems until significantly after each new release, and (2) our
development process tends to be largely reactive to individual problems and
wish-list items.
And so, *Krita Testing Days are about dedicating a small amount of our
development time *(one workday per month) *to simply using Krita, getting
some hands-on time in with upcoming features, and thinking critically about
the current state of Krita's user experience and work flow*.

We will also be *meeting throughout the day on #Krita on IRC as well as
https://meet.kde.org <https://meet.kde.org>!*
*(A link to the https://meet.kde.org <https://meet.kde.org> group will be
added to this thread when it's ready.)*


*2. Is this a beta?*

Not exactly. Beta tests are geared towards having users test a specific
upcoming version just before release, and usually span a number of days or
weeks.
As developers, we're usually too busy coding to actively participate in
beta tests, so we have to rely on a subset of our most dedicated users to
try out beta releases.

On the other hand, Krita Testing Days are about dedicating some of our
full-time development team's resources towards testing any recent version
(including the master branch, a nightly release, any ongoing beta branches,
or even merge request branches).

*3. So who can participate?*

Anybody, of course!

While this is mainly about setting aside a bit of time to get the
development team to actually use Krita, everybody is welcome.
As an open source project just about everything we do is open to the public
and there are plenty of people in our community (artists, developers and
everything in between) who can provide useful and unique insights into the
current state and future direction of the project.
In fact, if you're an artist who spends a considerable amount of time using
Krita throughout the week (and you're free to share what you're working on)
it would be super cool to have you!

So, whoever you are, If you're interested and have some time to stop by on
a weekday, please do! The more the merrier.

*4. ...Do I have to?*

Definitely not. If you'd prefer to work on code as you normally do, then
that's fine too. :)


*5. What do we do?*

First and foremost, just *spend some time using Krita to draw, paint,
animate, storyboard or edit!*
Please test on *one or more recent builds*: master, a nightly build, an
upcoming release, or even a pending merge request.

I also recommend *taking written notes* about your thoughts and experiences
throughout the day, as well as any bugs that you encounter or feature ideas
that you come up with.
As a developer you might have the inclination to jump right back into the
code to work on something that annoys you, but that can quickly lead you
down a rabbit hole so I would suggest just making note of it for the time
being.
(Some things to consider: work flow, user interface, performance,
functionality, intuitiveness, feel, etc.)

Finally, *come hang out throughout the day on #Krita and
https://meet.kde.org <https://meet.kde.org>* where people will be
discussing the program, sharing their artwork, and (optionally) sharing
screens!

-----

So *Krita Testing Day #1 *will be on* Thursday, January 7th, 2021.*

My hope is that this will be both a good use of our time and a fun thing to
do.
If it is, then we will make this a monthly event scheduled sometime during
the first week of each month.
If not, then at least we tried. ;)
- Emmet
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kimageshop/attachments/20210104/1bebaaab/attachment.htm>