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Re: Dropping Alphas for raring cycle

 

Oh heck, I left one out that i don't think Nicholas mentioned either.

There kind of need to be two separate "install alongside" tests to be sure the button in the lower right hand corner changes from Continue to Install Now (and vice versa) depending on whether or not adequate free space exists.

It's all good clean fun :^)

Lance

--- On Tue, 10/30/12, Phill Whiteside <PhillW@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

From: Phill Whiteside <PhillW@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [Lubuntu-qa] Dropping Alphas for raring cycle
To: "Lance" <lbsolost@xxxxxxxxx>
Cc: lubuntu-qa@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Tuesday, October 30, 2012, 7:41 PM

Hi,
you guys are on the mark!
It is planned to have a matrix for test cases, that is something for 13.10 from the discussion. What was really stressed at that session is the risk of burn out. It's something I do keep going on about. Please do not 'feel bad' if you're a bit tired / bad time of month / RL is getting at you etc. etc.

If any of you ever feel that testing is becoming a chore, take a break! With what happened at the end of 12.10 I'm honestly amazed that all you guys are still here. I cannot put into words, nor can others, just how amazing you all were. Jeez.... 36 hours to do a weeks worth of testing? As I said previously, you all proved that "impossible" is two letters too long.

As it stands, you can go into a test case and register it to yourself as 'started', that will show others that that particular test case is being addressed and (hopefully) allow them to choose one that has not been adopted. You don't have to allocate yourself to an entire iso test case, just that the iso tracker can alert you when a re-spin occurs. 

Regards,
Phill.

On 31 October 2012 00:27, Lance <lbsolost@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I'm guessing that it will end up being "adopt an iso (or upgrade) + adopt an installation process" since we''ll apparently have at least 4 or 5 new installation options:


#upgrade via live media
#reinstall via live media
#lvm installation
#full disk encryption
#possibly another for encryption of only the desired partitions(s) via manual partitioning

Best case scenario is 20 to 30 minutes per test if no major bugs are encountered. This will be a bit more than just a heavy lift IMHO :^)


Lance

--- On Tue, 10/30/12, Phill Whiteside <PhillW@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


From: Phill Whiteside <PhillW@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [Lubuntu-qa] Dropping Alphas for raring cycle
To: "Lance"
 <lbsolost@xxxxxxxxx>
Cc: lubuntu-qa@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Tuesday, October 30, 2012, 7:06 PM


Hi Lance,
amongst many things that have been discussed is the 'burn-out' of testers. One of the things that I 'squealed' about was the asking the testers to do a weeks' worth of testing in 2 - 3 days (Or, if we take the final RC just 36 hours). Whilst we hope that such a fraknestorm will not hit 13.04 it was quite apparent that the testers were being squeezed into an ever shrinking time window.


The milestones 'should' have been released on Friday for testing to finish the following Thursday. I don't need to tell you guys that this pretty much never happened, yet the Thursday deadline was never changed. Quite simply, this was an idiotic way of doing things. 


With the new testing system, we use a 'daily' one every two weeks and peck it to death for 7 days. During this 7 days of testing, said image will get bug fixes. In terms of that it is like re-spins that happen during a milestone release. The massive (IMHO) difference is that with the new testing system the testers (your good selves) get pre-warned about something being added / major change / new feature etc. and thus know where to go test. The cadence iso will be still be re-spun each day and with the change made during 'Q' cycle, the iso-tracker can now alert people to known bugs and their status.


I'm terrible at trying to explain this as we're all used to Dailies & Milestones... We have to forget that system until we hit the Beta release (only one of them) and the RC.


Let me try :)
Each day, the system will generate a new iso with all the 'new' stuff in it. Every two weeks we will pluck that daily image and test it for a full 7 days until it gets fed up of being tested and agrees to pass all the tests.

During it's interrogation (oops testing) it is allowed to have a re-spin for sins (oops.. bugs) that it has.
The mind step change is that yes, every two weeks we have a 'milestone' release - The important difference is that:


It's not a milestone!We have a guaranteed 7 days to testIt does not need all tests run & passed to continue.
Instead of all of us running around trying to test everything in a couple of days, we can instead schedule our own work-load. This is where 'adopt an iso' comes in. You can agree to carry out testing on iso i386 / AMD64/ PPC etc. etc. you will be emailed when a respin has occurred but much more importantly... you will be able to see on the wiki area WHY a respin has occurred. This was only read by the few who actually logged onto the EtherPAd - It will now be posted for all testers to see.


Honest Lance, I've been aware of cadence since 12.10 and am still getting my head round it! It is a better system, it's just going to take a while for us 'old dogs' to learn 'new tricks' :)


Please continue to ask questions, if I cannot answer them, I'll ask Nicholas - after all, that's what he's there for!
Regards,
Phill.




On 30 October 2012 23:17, Lance <lbsolost@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:


You're doing fine Phill :^)

I'm just curious how this will all shake out for iso/upgrade testers.

If they expect testers to devote every day, every other week to testing that's much more than most of us can handle ..... I'd think :^)



Like at the end of the last cycle we almost got in a race, thank goodness Greg and others jumped up to the plate again. I did manage to pull off upgrade tests on both i386 and amd64, but I stumbled on iso testing due to a silly hardware problem.



Suffice it to say that testing can be quite a challenge and the last thing we'd want to do is discourage testers from participating.

Lance

--- On Tue, 10/30/12, Phill Whiteside <PhillW@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:



From: Phill Whiteside
 <PhillW@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [Lubuntu-qa] Dropping Alphas for raring cycle
To: "Lance" <lbsolost@xxxxxxxxx>

Cc: lubuntu-qa@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "Julien Lavergne" <gilir@xxxxxxxxxx>


Date: Tuesday, October 30, 2012, 5:43 PM

Hi Lance,
I hope my earlier email made sense of the discussion that was do we do Sun --> Sat OR Fri --> Thur 

Fri --> Thur won and that will be the cycle. I can only apologise for any confusion, the ether pad was a discussion area for the session and did not include all that was decided.

I'm trying to keep you guys in the loop, as it is quite critical what is being decided - some times the written word is not as fast as the spoken word in a session!
Regards,



Phill.

On 30 October 2012 22:14, Lance <lbsolost@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:



I forwarded a copy of this to my daughter and her thought was that "Sunday - Saturday/Friday - Thursday" would be better defined by saying:




Sunday -> Saturday
Friday -> Thurday

Either way, if that is correct, do they expect each iso/upgrade tester to test every day of that cycle?

If so it's a major overload and I think that type of test cycle will only serve to discourage volunteer testing :^(




Lance

--- On Tue, 10/30/12, Lance <lbsolost@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:




From: Lance <lbsolost@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [Lubuntu-qa] Dropping Alphas for raring cycle
To: lubuntu-qa@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "Phill Whiteside" <PhillW@xxxxxxxxxx>



Cc: "Julien Lavergne" <gilir@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date:
 Tuesday, October 30, 2012, 4:08 PM

My thoughts on this are largely positive. When I look at the linked doc I see Nicholas addressed a couple of my concerns:




# stability -- non-developer centric scheduling and testing; code was caught in an untestable state during planned testing

# Should we target specific packages for testing inclusion as part of cadence weeks?




That said I'm not entirely sure what the test cycle is going to be other than "every two weeks" during what we'd previously called "alpha". I'm not the brightest bulb on the tree and referring to "Sunday - Saturday/Friday - Thursday" is a bit confusing to me :^)




Somewhat off-topic but it was mentioned in a previous message that some installation test-cases were changing. I think that's great!

I've never used LVM or full disk
 encryption but we'd long neglected the upgrade/reinstall via live CD/DVD/USB
 options which I've actually found to be a truly great option since Maverick ;^)

I just hope they keep Nicholas where he is! He seems to listen and he's open to change when and where change is needed.




Lance

PS: I've been doing some Precise 'abiword' testing:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2074321



Julien came to the rescue but i need a few more days to figure out a few things because we have to consider potential effects on all of the other flavors ;^)


--- On Tue, 10/30/12, Phill Whiteside <PhillW@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

From: Phill Whiteside <PhillW@xxxxxxxxxx>



Subject: Re: [Lubuntu-qa] Dropping Alphas for raring cycle
To: lubuntu-qa@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: "Julien Lavergne" <gilir@xxxxxxxxxx>



Date: Tuesday, October 30, 2012, 12:54 PM

Hi folks, 
apologies for the zero notice on this, I was part way through drafting something up when I got distracted over our test-cases!



I've attached the ether-pad (in html format to preserve the links) which has the various links on it for Cadence testing. It was agreed that we will do Fri - Thur testing instead of Sun - Sat in order not to split a weekend up.




To surmise, cadence testing will last for 7 days and be carried out fortnightly - as you can see from the attached document, Nicholas has some tasks to carry out to ready the wiki area for the calendar / reporting etc. It makes good sense for us to follow what 'main' Ubuntu are doing in terms of testing time tables and with cadence we do not have the mad scurry to get milestone releases out early in the cycle. During cadence the daily images will continue to be built and simply replace the cadence version on the iso tracker - So, it will be important to zsync before doing testing. 




Cadence was 'beta' tested by Ubuntu in the 'Q' cycle and the lessons learned are to be applied for 'R'. If you good people who do the grunt work of the testing have any questions do please ask (and I'll go ask Nicholas :P ).




Regards,
Phill.

On 30 October 2012 15:54, Julien Lavergne <gilir@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hi,



As you may know, Alphas will be dropped for Ubuntu ISOs, and it's up to the flavors to decide if they want to keep the Alphas or not. Instead, it will be replace by a cadence testing, meaning we can be free to organize the daily testing, and only have Beta 1, Beta 2 and Final release with the classic process. Personnaly, I think it's a good idea, since Alpha are basicly a snapshot of the current developpement with a bit more testing.







As you are the people who do the actual testing, what do you think about it ?



Thanks in advance for your feedback.



Regards,

Julien Lavergne





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