Re: RFC: Deb 2.0 testing process

[Brandon Mitchell <bhmit1@mail.wm.edu>]

On 5 Dec 1997, Karl M. Hegbloom wrote:

>  Well, I guess just a checklist outlining things from the policy guide
>  is what I had in mind.  Like whether it follows the FSSTND or FHS,
>  there's a copyright statement, compressed man page, menu file with
>  the dwww link and a menu item for X (with semi mandatory icon) if
>  appropriate.

Ok, I see what you mean now.  I was thinking of putting things like this
into a generic checklist for all packages.

>  Hmm.  You seem to be suggesting that the package maintianer submit a
>  checklist for other testers to use?  To ensure that it works
>  elswhere, not just on the build machine.  For that, the standard
>  checklist, then package specific ones I suppose.

Yes, the package maintainer submits the initial checklist since they
should know the most about each package.  Then the maintainer, testers, or
anyone for that matter, has the option of adding to the checklist.  

The reasoning behind this is to make sure the package works on fresh
installs, upgraded installs, and doesn't have any problems when other
packages are installed.

A few examples:
- nedit maintainer mentions nc but the tester gets netcat.
- config on a fresh install is different that an upgrade, like the X11
  library problem we had a while back.
- rplayer may work fine on maintainers system if they have the latest
  bash, but the tester may have an older version and have problems with
  netscape.

These are all old problems that theoretically could be caught with
testing.  The idea being, what works on a maintainers system may not work
everywhere.

For the initial list, I'll probably have them all sent to me.  But once we
get into the swing of things, I'll ask that they submit them to the
testing group so if a tester has an addition to the list, it's easy to
start a discussion.  Also I may not maintain this forever, and I don't
feel like asking for an account on master for the checklist maintainer.

>  I'll watch and see what some more experienced people have to say.

I'm hoping to get more opinions before I start doing this.  Fixing any
problems now is much easier than if we wait until half of the maintainers
have already submitted list.

Thanks for your comments,
Brandon

-----
Brandon Mitchell <bhmit1@mail.wm.edu>   "We all know linux is great... it
PGP: finger -l bhmit1@cs.wm.edu          does infinite loops in 5 seconds"
Phone: (757) 221-4847                      --Linus Torvalds



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