On 2009-09-13 13:12-0400 Hazen Babcock wrote: > Alan W. Irwin wrote: >> >> In any case, I think we should formally ask for some testing help on the >> plplot-general list a week before each release from now on for all >> platforms >> but especially for the Windows platforms where we don't have good testing >> coverage. (A week should give us time to deal with most issues that come >> up). From our download statistics and number of questions asked on >> plplot-general there appears to be more and more interest in PLplot so >> encouraging the new users to help out with testing on all our platforms >> (especially for the many different Windows platforms where our developer >> coverage is thin) makes a lot of sense. If there is general consensus this >> is a good idea, and Hazen is willing to send such an e-mail the week before >> each release, I will put a reminder in README.Release_Manager_Cookbook. > > I'm willing to send such an e-mail.
Thanks, Hazen. I have thought some more about organizing our release testing, and what I would like to do is make that a joint e-mail from me and you in our roles as testing coordinator and release manager. "Testing coordinator" is a role I have taken fairly seriously in the past. Although I have not been doing much of that recently, I plan to increase my activity in this role again to avoid running into release problems like we just encountered with example 19. What I plan to do as testing coordinator two weeks before each release is contact everyone who is interested in helping out with testing, and ask them their specific plans (i.e., what tests, what platforms). Here is a preliminary list of the testing team I would contact and my understanding of the platforms they have access to/would be willing to test. Yours, truly: Debian stable 64-bit Andrew Ross: Ubuntu 32-bit and 64-bit Orion Poplawski: Fedora Hazen Babcock: Mac OS X (PPC, 64bit?), Ubuntu, and Windows Werner Smekal: Mac OS X (Intel 64bit?), MinGW/MSYS, Windows Arjen Markus: Cygwin, Windows where "Windows" means a bare Windows platforms with one of the proprietary Windows compilers as opposed to Cygwin or MinGW (with or without MSYS). I know I have undoubtedly got some details wrong in the list above because this was all from memory of previous tests rather than looking up old e-mails, and I have also probably missed some individuals lurking on this list that would like to help out. Therefore, please respond off-list to me by updating the above list to what you can actually test, and I will collate all changes and put it in a README.testing_team file in the top-level of our source tree. That file will also serve as official recognition of the important role members of the test team play in providing quality releases for PLplot. I also plan to ask those on the testing team to report to me slightly more than a week before the release on exactly how much of that planned testing they got done so I could collate those reports for Hazen's and my joint e-mail to plplot-general that calls for pre-release testing. My hope is those definite testing reports will inspire PLplot users to try out the svn trunk version which, in turn, should help to find any issues that our testing missed. Assuming we complete fairly comprehensive testing just a week+ before the release, that implies we should probably put an informal freeze on any development activity other than bug fixing and documentation for the week leading up to the release so that our good testing results continue to be relevant for the release. These testing plans also imply that members of the test team should contribute strongly to the discussion of release dates so we don't end up with a testing week that happens to be at an inconvenient/awkward time which would make it impossible for some member of the test team to participate in the testing week. Alan __________________________ Alan W. Irwin Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca). Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software package (plplot.org); the libLASi project (unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net). __________________________ Linux-powered Science __________________________ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Let Crystal Reports handle the reporting - Free Crystal Reports 2008 30-Day trial. Simplify your report design, integration and deployment - and focus on what you do best, core application coding. Discover what's new with Crystal Reports now. http://p.sf.net/sfu/bobj-july _______________________________________________ Plplot-devel mailing list Plplot-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/plplot-devel
