[Cooker] Testzillers wanted...

[Stéphane Teletchéa]

Hi cookers :-)

A next generation of contributers is born, let's celebrate Testzillers !

Shortly, you can become one of them, adding one star to your (T-)shirt 
of Mandriva's Community Contribution, another proof of your commitment 
to our favorite distribution.

What is this *new* system ?
-------------------------------------

Some of you may remember the project initiated some time ago (december 
2003) by F. Lepied concerning a new way of testing the distribution. 
This project was named 'Testzilla'.

Under a general server-client framework based on end-user-oriented 
procedures or automatic tests, the goal is to provide a general tool for 
precisely test a functionality, guiding him through the processus.

Since the end of March, I'm working on it and i'm trying to provide a 
coverage as wide as possible of the hardware, the wizards, the 'visible' 
applications, and all the rest.

For the moment, around 60 procedures are written (some coming from other 
Mandriva employees, about a third from me, the figure is growing every 
day), but the list if far from being complete. You can see the list of 
written procedures at:
http://qa.mandriva.com/test_index.cgi?test_summary=1

I'm now trying to involve some -if not all- of you to provide me some 
feedback on these procedures:

1 - please try them and validate your hardware/software using the procedure

2 - ask for specific procedures missing for the moment (i'm getting a 
todo list but it will probably not overlap with your needs)

3 - report any problem on them (in a first round, to me and the list), 
including malformed sentences, bad English, unclear procedure

4 - filling up documentation on the wiki to help Testzillers (who won't 
be in the future as expert as you) finding the best way to report 
precisely what is the source of the problem. For instance, see the 
excellent web page made by F. Crozat : 
http://qa.mandriva.com/twiki/bin/view/Main/HotPluggableHardwareRemovableMedia

Please keep in mind that a test is quite simple to do (see the 
procedures themselves, they are not very big and should not be bigger), 
should focus on a precise point (see the Guidelines for more information 
if you want to involve yourself in writing one: 
http://cvs.mandriva.com/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/testzilla/procedures/guidelines.txt?rev=1.7&content-type=text/x-cvsweb-markup).

I've set up a little web page on Testzillers' goals : 
http://qa.mandriva.com/twiki/bin/view/Main/Testziller

It will grow as the rest of the wiki, for now it is quite simple :-)

There are two goals towards which the wiki pages should tend to :
* provide usefull, precise informations for having bug report as precise 
and as clear as possible, thus allowing the package maintainer to 
identify rapidly from where the problems comes,
* provide more information globally on how the system works, ideally to 
permit to any new linux user to be able to report a problem (i'm always 
a little too optimistic).

More to come on the subject, i'm letting you getting more familiar with 
the process, hoping you'll find the idea great and enjoy it, i would 
even say being proud of becoming the not-famous-for-the-moment first 
Mandriva's Testzillers !

Feel free to comment, ask for more information, enrich the wiki.

See the embryological page:
http://qa.mandriva.com/twiki/bin/view/Main/Testziller

From the main page :
See the tab 'Test the distribution' under How to...

Sincerely yours,

Stef, QA Team member dedicated to procedures.

--
Mandrakesoft becomes Mandriva -> http://www.mandriva.com