|
| From: | Richard Frith-Macdonald |
| Subject: | Re: quality assurance (was: Re: GNUstep Base 1.11.0) |
| Date: | Sun, 24 Jul 2005 07:08:00 +0100 |
Branching is good in the way that we can point users of GNUstep to a bugfix release if they happen to encounter a bug in a GNUstep release instead of saying: "use the CVS version" which turned into some sort of standard reply in the case of a bug. That would give us greater freedom on changing things in the CVS while still having something useable for the users. This would also result in applications developed against a certain release instead of have an application requiring the CVS because a necessary bugfix is in there.
Well, creating the branch is trivial ... but I wonder how many bugfixes would get into it ... having to fix both the head and the latest branch (possibly with different fixes) could chew up quite a bit of time. Mostly, when I have reservations about funadmentally good ideas, it's because I know I don't even have the time to do things I want to do and suspect that's true of everyone else too. That being said ... if we created a branch from each release, perhaps there is someone out there who would like to maintain the latest branch by copying back any fixes made to head?
Think about your use-pattern of GCC: do you use the CVS or weekly snapshot version of GCC or do you use GCC 3.3.6 or GCC 3.4.4 because the later are a lot more mature than the first two? People don't want always live on the bleeding edge.
My pattern is erratic ... sometimes cvs for a few weeks, more often whatever's in debian/unstable, depending on whether activity in ObjC support in the compiler has turned interesting. I think in general though, I just use what works ... and if it doesn't work, I generally update to latest release or cvs version I can find.
And in turn this could improve the perception of GNUstep. I spoke to several Cocoa-developers who tried to use GNUstep (after I am told them to do so). The common response was that every time something else is broken, including things which already were working, which annoyed them a lot and was leading to the conclusion: "GNUstep is just a hobbyists project"
I think the only thing which would help with that at all is a *lot* more manpower. I don't think things *often* get broken in obvious ways ... but in the gui/backend in particular there is a lot of stuff where interactions with external systems, timing of events etc can mean that small changes produce problems that don't show up under testing by the developer because the app(s) they are using for testing or the environment (window manager, speed of processor etc) doesn't trigger them. These sort of issues appear in the cvs code and get into the next release, only being detected *after* release ... because we don't have neough people using the cvs code. So to that extent, I think we must try to *encourage* people to use cvs frequently somehow (though with a clear understanding of the downsides of doing so).
Hmm ... but how can we encourage lots of people to use/test CVS or prerelese snapshots?
How about using the donation money GNUstep got for buying some testing machines which would go into the same place as the GNUstep web servers are and could then be used for testing/developing GNUstep onto some more "exotic" platforms: Some *BSD, some Solaris boxen (be it x86 or SPARC), a Mac (Mac mini should be enough), maybe some HPUX box should be enough for the start. Those machines don't necessarily need to be new hardware, I guess we could get them used somewhere for cheap. Then put them online with special ssh accounts (maybe some VNC too) for the core devs and there you go: compilation and testing is possible remotely for those who need it.
That sounds good ... but I don't know if we have anything like enough money.There is the cost of the machines ... but there is also the issue of running them ... where would we put them so that they can be kept running continuously with a good network link ... what would the running costs be? Adam might know if this is practical... but it does seem a good use for any money we get.
Even better than donating a machine to developer X because this way all can participate and share.2. keep asking people to contribute regression testcases if/when they have the time. The fact that people had to install guile to run the old regression tests was an excuse for them not to help ... with the new testsuite that excuse no longer exists.maybe we should ask for testcases/bug isolations on the bug reporting page?
I don't know if/how the savannah bug reporting page can be modified, but we did (do?) have that sort of request on the website. Actually, I'm more concerned with getting bug reports at all ... I occasionally hear tales of MacOS-X users having tried GNUstep and given up because it's buggy ... but I don't see corresponding bug reports on savannah (few appear to come from MacOS-X users), so I suspect that most people can't be bothered to file a bug report, let alone provide a testcase. I worry that being too agressive about requesting testcases might put off the bug reporters we do get ... but perhaps anyone willing to file a bug report is not going to be put off by that.
| [Prev in Thread] | Current Thread | [Next in Thread] |