[nycbug-talk] eurobsdcon

[Pete Wright]

Bob Ippolito wrote:

>
> On May 24, 2004, at 9:17 AM, Pete Wright wrote:
>
>> Brown, James (Jim) wrote:
>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: G.Rosamond [mailto:george at sddi.net]
>>>> Sent: Sunday, May 23, 2004 10:31 PM
>>>> To: Jan Schaumann
>>>> Cc: NYC Bug List
>>>> Subject: Re: [nycbug-talk] eurobsdcon
>>>>
>>>> On May 23, 2004, at 10:25 PM, Jan Schaumann wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> Dru <dlavigne6 at sympatico.ca> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> -contributing documentation, tutorials, reviews
>>>>>>
>>>>> This is one point that can't be stressed enough.  Documentation is
>>>>> something that anybody can contribute to - even though
>>>>
>>>> getting really
>>>>
>>>>> <snip>
>>>>>
>>>
>>> Documentation is important, but there is a more critical need, IMHO.
>>>
>>> Open Source software needs reliable testing frameworks.  Most Open
>>> Source projects of substance are large (> 50K lines of code) and
>>> most do not have a reliable, rigorous testing framework. My 
>>> perception is that Open Source testing consists mainly of just
>>> getting as many people as possible to run the project code
>>> and submit bug reports.  While helpful, this is spotty testing.
>>>
>>>
>>> The Perl Test Harness is a step in the right direction.  Test 
>>> programs are written for specific features of a module
>>> and compared against expected output.  These can be run by
>>> anyone, on any hw/sw platform that runs Perl.
>>>
>>> The BIND 9 test suite is another good example, although in this
>>> case, it's not easy to set up and run.
>>>
>>>
>>> Consider challenging the Open Source community to develop testing
>>> frameworks for every project.  'make test' should perform a complete 
>>> suite of tests for the project that can be reused
>>> for every release.
>>>
>> yea i totally agree with you there.  and hopefully OSDL has started 
>> to take on this role, and maybe other organizations will follow.  i 
>> do not even know of any opensource software testing out there, is 
>> there any?
>
>
> It's almost exclusively done on a project by project basis.  Testing 
> is a lot harder than it sounds.  You more or less have to design your 
> software to be easily testable, or you're pretty screwed.  Developing 
> a test suite is often just as hard, sometimes harder, than the 
> application or library itself.  It takes a much higher level 
> understanding of the problem at hand and the implementation of the 
> software in order to write effective tests.
>
> -bob
>
yea, i was referring to products like Intersolv's PVCS tracker (i used 
to work for them).  I know we have Bugzilla etc. in the FOSS area, to 
track bugs, but i don't know if there is an enterprise testing suite out 
there.

-p

-- 
~~~oO00Oo~~~
Pete Wright
email:  pete at nomadlogic.org
mobile: 917.415.9866
web:    www.nomadlogic.org/~pete