<div dir="ltr">Automated testing is a decent go/no-go but there's no way automated testing can ever truly replace manual testing, which is generally more exploratory in nature. We find all sorts of little problems this way. Automated testing's great for the truly borked installs, but that's about it. I've included ubuntu-quality so perhaps they can chime in on this one.<div><br></div><div>I'll also add that those images that have seen the most automated testing are the ones that are core Canonical products. Those are the ones that have paid employees working on them constantly. There is a high likelihood that this is the reason why the quality going into automated testing is already quite good. I can't say this is equally true for the various flavors.<br><div><br></div><div>As for the Release Task Signup, I'm not sure if it's even really truly clear to all members of community what their new responsibility is. I was around during the transition, but all of the current release managers were not. I really don't feel like there's an adequate amount of advertising on the part of the release team about this. Instead, there seems to be an expectation that our volunteer release managers are somehow going to be able to intuit the need to make this happen when they've got other concerns. </div></div><div><br></div><div>It does seem that there are a core group of committed folks (myself, elfy, flexiondotorg, and Riddell— some of which are no longer with us) have been responsible for the community release tasks since the change was made. But what about the others? There's Kylin, GNOME, Studio, Myth, etc. Maybe trying to reach them directly might be a good idea.</div><div><br></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Jan 25, 2016 at 10:54 PM, Steve Langasek <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:steve.langasek@ubuntu.com" target="_blank">steve.langasek@ubuntu.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">Hi Walter,<br> <br> On Mon, Jan 25, 2016 at 09:42:07PM -0800, Walter Lapchynski wrote:<br> > I think it's worthwhile doing alphas, especially for an LTS version.<br> <br> Could you elaborate what value you see that you're getting out of these<br> alphas, that couldn't be achieved more effectively by e.g. automated install<br> testing against the daily images? To me it looks very much like momentum:<br> we've always done alphas so we should continue to do alphas. Maybe I'm<br> missing something, and if I am then let's by all means proceed with alpha 2<br> and give the flavor teams what they need. But I'd also like to challenge<br> folks to think about whether this is still the case, or if there are other<br> things we could be doing instead that would provide better value to the<br> flavors for the time invested.<br> <br> > So Lubuntu would like to participate. I'd certainly love not to have to<br> > sign up for Release Tasks, but if I must…<br> <br> It doesn't seem like there's so much value to the flavors that people want<br> to sign up for this in advance. ;) Isn't this somewhat telling in itself?<br> <br> Thanks,<br> <span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888">--<br> Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS<br> Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world.<br> Ubuntu Developer <a href="http://www.debian.org/" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://www.debian.org/</a><br> <a href="mailto:slangasek@ubuntu.com">slangasek@ubuntu.com</a> <a href="mailto:vorlon@debian.org">vorlon@debian.org</a><br> </font></span></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div>@wxl | <a href="http://polka.bike" target="_blank">http://polka.bike</a><br>Lubuntu Release Manager & Head of QA<br>Ubuntu PPC Point of Contact<br>Ubuntu Oregon LoCo Team Leader<br>Ubuntu Membership Board & LoCo Council Member<br>Eugene Unix & GNU/Linux User Group Co-Organizer</div></div></div> </div>