Kathey Marsden wrote:
On 11/12/2010 6:13 AM, Rick Hillegas wrote:
Just a gentle reminder to please get your 10.7 changes in by 5:00 am
Monday morning San Francisco time. Soon after that time I will cut
the 10.7 branch, regenerate the release notes to sweep up last minute
bug fixes, and then build the release candidate.
If you need more time to finish up your 10.7 work, please let me know
before then.
Hi Rick,
The schedule says Buddy testing is: 2010-11-01 - 2010-11-15 and then
release candidate 2010-11-15 Although I think it is important to
test features before the release candidate is cut, doesn't buddy
testing normally happen against the actual bits and documentation we
plan to release?
Hi Kathey,
Right, we have done it that way in the past. My thinking on this topic
has evolved a bit, though. Nowadays I think of buddy-testing as a sort
of integration test which we should perform before producing the release
candidate. I lump it together with the sanity-checking of the release
notes. Here's how I map the Apache process onto traditional
closed-source terms these days:
Buddy-testing = Integration test
Release candidate vetting = Alpha test
First release from a new branch = Beta test
Second release from a branch = Production-quality release
Five years ago when I first joined the Derby community, I thought of the
release vetting as a Beta test. But I was wrong. The Apache process
requires us to share the release candidate only with people on the
developer list, not with our broader user community. We don't get real
Beta testing by real users until we actually publish the release on the
download page. The first brave users who end up running a Derby feature
release end up being our beta-testers. Working backward from that fact
makes the candidate vetting an Alpha test at best.
The value which we get out of buddy-testing seems to me to be what
people expect from an integration test in closed-source companies. Up
until buddy testing, it seems to me that we merely unit-test fixes and
features. We don't perform any systems or integration-testing before
then. So buddy-testing is the closest fit which I can find to the
traditional concept of an integration test. In the closed-source
environments where I have worked, the integration test precedes the
alpha test, and the alpha test happens either on the release candidate
or even before that.
I plan to do some testing on DERBY-728 today but will continue next
week with the release candidate.
All testing appreciated whenever it happens.
Thanks,
-Rick
Thanks
Kathey
