[Testing] Test Meeting Minutes, 10/22/07

[Titus Brown]

Hi, Kim,

I should have attended the meeting, but I didn't so... here are some
naive comments/questions:

->    - Michael summarized the Test Activity logging feature: purpose is to
->    reduce the cost of testing by distributing the testing and automate the
->    logging upload. In the short term, we should focus on getting the logging
->       - Modify sugar to put a wrapper around an activity to turn on
->       its logging. Then a crash or a user initiated activity close will zip up
->       files and send them to a central server.
->       - The central server can start off with a generic account
->       (perhaps password-less smtp, or something). Could possibly have
-> a local smtp
->       server to send an email with attachment.

This sounds like a good idea to me.  Why SMTP and not the Web, though?

Is the plan to ship this on "final" versions of the software, just
disabled by default?

->       3. Reliable delivery in the face of network downtime

Oh.  That's why SMTP and not the Web, then ;)

->    - Takes too long to get outside developers up to speed and
->    contributing
->       - focused documentation

I agree that it can be difficult to find linear docs for installation,
etc; perhaps I'm an old fogey but the wiki "commenting" system is
annoying ;).

I managed to get the OLPC image running in Mac OS X + Parallels, as well
as under sugar-jhbuild under Ubuntu 7.10 (latest).  Once I located the
docs, actually setting stuff up was quite easy, but it took a while to
locate precisely the right docs. So, it might be useful to post a
non-wikified set of instructions (maybe in git?) that gives canonical
instructions for certain systems.

To rephrase: Right now the wiki broadly specifies hints, instructions,
etc. on how to get things generally working on many different distros.
Having a central canonical set of instructions for a more focused set of
OSes might be really useful.

For example, I could easily write/adapt simple and clear pages for:

	1. Running the OLPC image ver X in Parallels on a Mac OS X
	machine, ver Y.

	2. Installation an Ubuntu dist from scratch and then installing
	sugar-jhbuild.

Having a small, well-maintained/tested set of instructions like this
could *considerably* reduce the time it takes someone with serious
intent to get going -- like, down to 20 minutes for the image booting.

->       - too much overhead to get hosting for access to git repository

What do you mean?

->    - On the manual side, we also didn't have enough planning to get
->    people going quickly:
->       - Need to get on Trac
->       - Need to get on mailing lists
->       - Need to get on irc
->       - Need to edit wiki pages

That's pretty simple to write up...

-> Should we have someone spend a few hours on the getting started wiki pages
-> so that new developers or testers really can get started.

...but I'm not sure it belongs on a wiki (see above).

An alternative to moving stuff off of the wiki is to have a set of very
well maintained (simplified) Wiki pages.  This might require a dedicated
effort by a non-volunteer.

cheers,
--titus

p.s. Normally I'm a big fan of wikis.  Dunno what's gotten into me!