I wanted to write everyone to let them know about what opportunities
exist right now for quality efforts. Generally the first part of the
cycle is a bit slower for QA as we all take a needed break to refocus
and plan after the release. With vivid now well underway things are
ramping up! I wanted to cover the different opportunities available to
you as part of the ubuntu quality community. There's opportunities for
every role listed on https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/Roles. We need folks
to help test as well as write new tests. Testing and writing manual
testers can be learned by anyone, no coding required. That said, if you
have skills or interest in technical work, I would encourage you to try
helping out on some of these tasks. You will learn by doing and get help
from others while you do it.
I realized while drafting this mail, this might work better as a blog
post, so you can read it there as well, including handy links:
http://www.theorangenotebook.com/2014/12/quality-opportunities-for-vivid-cycle.html
Now onto the good stuff! What can you do to help ubuntu this cycle from
a quality perspective?
Dogfooding
There is an ever present need for brave folks willing to simply run the
development version of ubuntu and use it as a daily machine throughout
the cycle. It's one of the best ways for us as a community to uncover
bugs and issues, in particular things that regress from the previous
release. Upgrade to vivid today and see what you can break!
QATracker
This tool is written in drupal7 and runs the iso.qa.ubuntu.com and
packages.qa.ubuntu.com sites. These sites are used to record and view
the results of all of our manual testing efforts. Currently dkessel is
leading the effort on implementing some needed UI changes. The code and
more information about the project can be found on launchpad. The
tracker is one of our primary tools and needs your help to become
friendly for everyone to use.
In addition a charm would be useful to simplify setting up a development
environment. The charm can be based upon the existing drupal charm. At
the moment this work is ready for someone to jump in.
Unity8
Running unity8 as a full-time desktop is a personal goal I have for this
cycle. I hope some others might also want to be early adopters and join
me in this goal. For now you can help by testing the unity8 desktop.
Have a look at running unity in lxc for an easy way to run unity8 today
on your machine. Use it, test it, and offer feedback. I'll be talking
more about unity8 as the cycle progresses and opportunities to test new
features aimed at the desktop appear.
Core Apps
The core apps project is an excellent way to get involved. These
applications have been lovingly developed by community members just like
you. Many of the teams are looking for help in writing tests and for
someone who can help bring a testing mindset and eye to the work. As of
this writing specifically the docviewer, terminal and calculator teams
would love your help. The core apps hackdays are happening this week,
drop by and introduce yourself to get started!
Manual Tests
Like the sound of writing tests but the idea of writing code turns you
off? Manual tests are needed as well! They are written in English and
are easy to understand and write. Manual tests include everything you
see on the qatracker and are managed as a launchpad project. This means
you can pick a bug and "fix it" by submitting a merge request. The bugs
involve both fixing existing tests as well as requests for new testcases.
Images
As always there are images that need testing. Testing milestones occur
later in the cycle which involve everyone helping to test a specific set
of images. In the meantime, daily images are generated that have made it
through the automated tests and are ready for manual testing. Booting an
image in a live session is a great way to check for regressions on your
machine. Doing this early in the cycle can help make sure your hardware
and others like it experience a regression free upgrade when the time comes.
Triaging
After subjecting software to testing, bugs are naturally found. These
bugs then need to be verified and triaged. The bugsquadders, as they are
called, would be happy to help you learn to categorize or triage bugs
and do other tasks.
Happy Testing!
Nicholas
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