iPhone;450298 Wrote: > > With SC as large as it is and with all it can do and users asking for > more, at this point it is almost impossible to catch everything that > could/might/are affected by a Code change. Can you image Slim Devices > trying to do what they do without the Forum and the Beta user community? > With all the features, devices available, plugins, etc, it would be next > to impossible for even a group of people to test every single feature, > in every available configuration, between Production releases much less > before the next Nightly release. The Beta Community submits bugs and > catches what it can to help with this process. > Finding every bug can't be done in an economical way, the quality is related to the cost of testing it.
For each product you will have to decide which quality you can afford to reach. As an example if there is a major bug in some software in an aircraft your company is going to be heavily affected after the aircraft crash. It's not going to make the people that was inside the aircraft and their relatives happy if you fix the bug a week later. With a music player a bug will cause a bit of frustration but often people are happy when it works a week later. I think there are a number of reasons why we have the current situation, like: ============================================================ 1. There isn't a specification that describes how it is supposed to work, much of the functionality seems to be in the head of different people. This is especially true if we talk about how it should behave with different combinations of settings and tagging schemes. A result of this is that you don't remember to test everything because you don't remember the functionality exists. It's also hard to prioritize correctly during your testing work. They started to do this once but I don't think it was finished: http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/Slim_Server_Specification_(6.5.1) http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/SlimServer7Spec I'm not sure if the above specifications are used anymore, someone from Logitech would have to answer if there is any point for us to help correcting them. 2. There aren't any official test cases available to the beta testers, so it's very hard for the beta testers and volunteers to do any structured testing without inventing the wheel themselves. I hope at least the Logitech test team has some kind of structured test cases, if they don't there should be a huge improvement potential. 3. Some parts of the code isn't automated tested, some because it's hard to do automated testing on it and some because no one has bothered yet. Automated test is really the best way to do testing on all functionality. 4. With the current amount of resources assigned to testing within the Logitech team it's hard or even impossible to get the quality some people expect. I still think there is a improvement potential but IMHO it's related to the first two points. So what can we do ? ==================== - Complain in the forum and tell the Logitech people how to do the work like I just did ? This really doesn't help much because I'm pretty sure they already know what the problem is. I'm guessing that's the reason it hasn't been done already is because they've had to prioritize other things. - Letting Logitech know if you think the quality is to low so they know if they have to improve or not. However, remember that it's always up to Logitech to decide if it's worth the cost or not. Sometimes it's easier to raise the income by adding more functionality than raising the quality of existing functionality. - Ask Logitech to stop the development for a year and only focus on testing every functionality that already exists ? With the result that the competition catches up and leaves Logitech behind... - Use the beta version and register bugs at http://bugs.slimdevices.com when we find something that doesn't work. - Buy more Squeezebox devices so Logitech can afford to add more people to their test team. - Help updating the above mentioned specifications on the wiki (if Logitech uses them). -- erland Erland Isaksson 'My homepage' (http://erland.isaksson.info) (Install my plugins through Extension Downloader) (Developer of 'TrackStat, SQLPlayList, DynamicPlayList, Custom Browse, Custom Scan, Custom Skip, Multi Library, Title Switcher and Database Query plugins' (http://wiki.erland.isaksson.info/index.php/Category:SlimServer)) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ erland's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=3124 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=66745 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
