Linux Desktop Testing Project

[Sivan Greenberg]

Matt Zimmerman wrote:
>> We should probably talk to the Fedora testing projects folks, their 
>> either had or still have something similar to this for the hive release 
>> of Fedora.
> 
> I'd be interested to hear the details.
> 

So today I talked to Will Woods from #fedora-devel, who explained that 
they are currently both working and designing a what would be an 
automated testing system that uses both dogtail, which would enable 
desktop application testing as well as system level operations using the 
Red Hat Test System. Those two "components" consist a project called 
"Table Cloth"[1] which aims to develop a complete open source testing 
framework. One might also find "Beaker"[2] interesting, as this is the 
open source / community adaptation of RHTS and will eventually become 
power up the machinery to publish test results on a web ui that aims to 
be easy to read and intuitive.

My hunch is that we should work closely with them on such a framework, 
with possibly hacking some of it to use our packaging "backend" - read 
Ian's Autopkgtest mechanism. Since both Ubuntu and Fedora use a core of 
GNOME desktop application, I'm sure we could benefit from tests they 
will/have written and they would be able to use ours. We could probably 
just as well benefit from system level and operations tests in the 
Beaker or RHTS[3] system, or are those planned to be taken care of by 
Ian autopkgtest enhancement to our packaging?

Will suggested that I started some discussion threads regarding this on 
fedora-qa lists, but I wanted to hear opinions here before embarking on 
it. It's worth mention that Will is interested to hear of our ideas, and 
we've set to talk again soon.

Thoughts?

Sivan

[1]: https://testing.108.redhat.com/
[2]: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Beaker
[3]: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/RHTS