bzr-svn tests on Windows

[Russel Winder]

Maritza,

On Mon, 2009-06-15 at 09:59 -0700, Maritza Mendez wrote:
> 
> Testing is obviously important.  And I think we've seen that several
> recent releases of bzr (not to mention plugins) might have benefited
> from a more coordinated approach.  But I respectfully suggest that the
> core team has shown commendable openness and transparency.  So rather
> than speculate on what Canonical is or is not doing on its own,
> perhaps some of the rest of us need to step up more.
> 
I think you might have slightly misinterpreted my email.  However, I do
sometimes get a bit strident with my emails, so perhaps the fault is
mine.

I think the core development team are doing a great job, there was no
general adverse criticism intended.

What I was trying to say is that each developer that contributes to
Bazaar -- and especially those that do it for love, not money -- is free
to choose the platform on which they work, and to not to have to use
other platforms.  Bazaar and its plugins (except platform specific ones)
must however work over all platforms.  It therefore helps Bazaar if
there is a multi-platform continuous integration (CI) system with the
results publicly accessible.

People in the community can then step up to a red not being tackled by
the lead developer, take a branch of the subsystem to be investigated,
get the red made green locally, and then submit the changeset to the
lead developer for integration into the mainline for that subsystem.

As far as I am aware there is no such CI system as yet.  So if there was
an adverse criticism, it was of the core team (and I guess in particular
the Canonical employees -- sorry all, especially Martin, for implicitly
picking you out) for not having created a publicly accessible CI server.

Given that Bazaar is a strategic product for Canonical then if, for a
small outlay, they provide a bit of infrastructure that engages more for
love, not money engagement improving  Bazaar, it leads to a very big
return on investment.  And Bazaar improves and its users are happier --
a wonderful feedback loop.  It strikes me that if Martin took a proposal
to Canonical "management" they really ought to fund a small CI farm --
which could of course be used for any and all of the strategic
products.  

> For my part, I am willing to do end-user testing of anything and
> everything about "bzr on Windows" subject to only three simple and
> reasonable understandings:
> 
> 1.  I set my own schedule, as this is a labor for passion not pay.

Absolutely.  For love, not money contributions can only happen as and
when they happen.

> 2.  The developers continue, as they already do, to patiently explain
> how to install the software, including dependencies.
> 
One caveat here, it may not be possible for the lead developer to
provide the information as the platform may be one they are not prepared
to work with.  So again the community as a whole must be the agent of
support.

> 3.  The test methods and any special scripts or tools are provided by
> the developers.

And/or by anyone contributing use case or scenarios.  I am fairly sure
that lead developers work best with contributions when those
contributions include usable test cases.  Obviously not all situations
lead to a test case, but where they can, it enables the developers to
work faster on the problem.
> 
> I see a lot of progress recently, especially in the areas of release
> management and issue triage.  Few FOSS projects can claim the
> commitment to quality and transparency that the bzr core developers
> show every day.  Many good things are happening and more are needed.
> That takes a user community willing to step up and fill gaps.
> 
I totally agree.

Personally I have been active in testing bzr-svn and submitting various
grumbles about bzr-gtk and qbzr, but only really on Ubuntu and a bit on
Mac OS X.  I haven't really got into the codebase as yet, but hopefully
I will during EuroPython.

The support that Jelmer needs for bzr-svn is, I think, for Windows,
FreeBSD, OpenSolaris, etc. users to step up and do bug reports and bug
fixes.  In support of this a publicly accessible CI farm would be a
great bit of infrastructure.  And marketing.
-- 
Russel.
=============================================================================
Dr Russel Winder      Partner
                                            xmpp: russel at russel.org.uk
Concertant LLP        t: +44 20 7585 2200, +44 20 7193 9203
41 Buckmaster Road,   f: +44 8700 516 084   voip: sip:russel.winder at ekiga.net
London SW11 1EN, UK   m: +44 7770 465 077   skype: russel_winder
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 197 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
Url : https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/bazaar/attachments/20090618/280f16ab/attachment.pgp