Two weeks for the price of one...

Build, Release and QA
---------------------
*Script recording/playback as test framework*
Mikeal pointed to John's recent checkin: a script recording/playback
feature. Mikeal would like to use this to replace the current CATS
automated tests. He's working on logging and results tracking. He wanted
to get approval on a few issues:
- use asserts instead of pass/fail (easy to catch in debugger)
- use "test run" for the logger name instead of python package
- move log output out of chandler.log
- put in a StreamHandler to stdout
- log level defaults: WARNING for test failures, CRITICAL for tracebacks
during runs, INFO for test passes, DEBUG for test start/stop
http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/chandler-dev/2006-December/007450.html

Grant suggested abandoning both asserts and the previous pass/fail
mechanism. Asserts won't fire during performance runs, which we'd want
to run optimized. He proposed inheriting from unittest.TestCase, arguing
that it has a well known, expressive API. He also noted that tests would
be able to share set up code.
http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/chandler-dev/2006-December/007451.html

Mikeal noted that the script playback feature might be used in other
non-test contexts. He's not opposed to making use of unittest, would
like to avoid conflating tests with scripts. Mikeal argued that most
tests would be generated, not written by hand, so the well known,
expressive API is less important. He asked how we'd handle tests that
share data with these generated tests. He made a distinction between
tests that are run by tinderbox (continuous integration) and tests
selected from a file or menu. Perhaps we could run the whole suite in
unittest.
http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/chandler-dev/2006-December/007452.html

Grant argued that we'll need to write code to verify data, the generated
scripts aren't going to be enough.  John responded that we can compare
the state of the UI and data when the script is recorded to when the
script is re-run. Grant asked if this really worked well, as in many
cases the state of the UI depends on the current date/time.
http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/chandler-dev/2006-December/007455.html

Grant and John had a further discussion about using asserts vs other
check methods.
http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/chandler-dev/2006-December/007459.html

*Preview release plan*
I summarized decisions about the release schedule through Preview.
- No alpha6 release (alpha5 is the last release)
- No further work on alpha4
- Added conflict management UI to alpha5
- Moved installers, dump/reload to alpha5
- Edit/update remains in alpha5
- Labeling/tagging and user defined attributes are cut from Preview
Feature freeze for alpha5 is Feb 15. Release is planned 6 weeks later.
We'll be dogfooding checkpoints after feature freeze.
http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/chandler-dev/2006-December/007460.html

*User list*
I asked if now was the time to create users list, based on Andre's
earlier comments. Philippe and Aparna mentioned that they both have
gotten comments from users that chandler-dev feels too technical to ask
questions. Both felt we should go ahead and create a list now, as we'd
get practice working with the list in advance of Preview. Davor, Reid,
and Ted agreed.
http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/chandler-dev/2006-December/007465.html

Philippe asked if we should do a forum instead of a list. Andre
responded that an archived email list is good enough.
http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/chandler-dev/2007-January/007476.html

I asked if we should create a list that focused on Chandler desktop, or
a list that covered osaf.us and Cosmo as well. Andre voted for a single
end-users list for Chandler/Cosmo. Marco Loregian agreed.
http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/chandler-dev/2007-January/007478.html

*Works for me*
I asked if "works for me" was the appropriate resolution for bugs that
developers can't reproduce even if we know that they still happen for
some end users. Philippe and Aparna agreed that "works for me" is indeed
the right resolution in this case. Aparna explained that "works for me"
bugs don't disappear -- QA keeps track of them and does not close them
out unless a fix or resolution is validated. The "works for me"
resolution gets it out of a developer's queue when they can't make any
progress on it, but the bug is kept around to try and find exact steps
to reproduce it. Andre suggested QA ask for help reproducing such bugs
on the soon-to-be-created users list.
http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/chandler-dev/2007-January/007477.html

*Checkpoint: Jan 2*
Bear spins:
http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/chandler-dev/2007-January/007470.html
Dan tests:
http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/chandler-dev/2007-January/007483.html

*Copyright 2007*
Bear reminded everyone to update the Copyright year to include 2007 in
any source files you edit.
http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/chandler-dev/2007-January/007490.html

*Command line options*
Andi tweaked command line option initialization. If you import Globals
without calling Utility.initOptions() (the code that parses command line
options), Globals.options will be initialized to default values set in
Utility's COMMAND_LINE_OPTIONS dir.
http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/chandler-dev/2007-January/007487.html

Dev
---
*Berkeley DB MVCC*
Andi added code to make use of Berkeley DB's new feature: MutliVersion
Concurrency Control. He's using a command line argument (--mvcc) to
enable the feature to give us time to try it out, as it is a new feature
for BDB. He'd like to make it the default in a few weeks. The feature
should reduce deadlocks, offer better read throughput, and result in
better memory cache usage. He'd like to run with the flag on the
performance tinderboxes to see if we notice a speedup. More details in
Andi's message:
http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/chandler-dev/2007-January/007481.html

Andre noticed a big improvement. In particular, he noticed that
sync/restore of his 9 collections is much improved.
http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/chandler-dev/2007-January/007484.html

*Prune your repository view*
Andi added an attribute allowing a repositoryView to specify the
"pruneSize". The view is pruned down to that size at commit() and
refresh(). He also added a --prune command line option to control the
default pruneSize for a view.
http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/chandler-dev/2007-January/007489.html

Meetings, Announcements
-----------------------
QA session testing Cosmo:
http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/chandler-dev/2007-January/007473.html

No apps team meeting. Status:
http://wiki.osafoundation.org/bin/view/Journal/AppsMeeting20070104
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