Fellow Developers,

As I get started testing, there are some things you can do which will 
make my life a lot easier. I'd like to request a couple things from you. 
This is just a request, though, no arm twisting or anything.

It would be helpful if you could compile a list of functional changes 
you have made since the last release. I know I could probably get the 
same information by combing through diff files and CVS logs, but I think 
the information would be a lot more coherent coming from you. That list 
of features will be where I will concentrate a lot of my testing.

Also, please keep in mind that I'm only one person. I can't debug your 
software for you, nor do I expect to have to. My job, right now, is to 
try to catch things that you missed in your own testing. Because of my 
limited knowledge of the application and limited time, my testing will 
be a bit shallow.

I know this will cause howls of protests, so remember, this is a 
request. If it's something you don't feel like you can do, don't worry 
about it. But, if you can, please think seriously about writing JUnit 
tests for the modules you work on. At the JUnit site, you can find a 
link to JMock, which is a library of routines that make it pretty easy 
to test classes without the rest of the application. There are even some 
excellent GUI testing libraries, but don't worry about those right now.

As I find time, I'm going to set up an environment on my machine where I 
can prove to myself that I can write automated test cases and put them 
into our build process. Once I have that done, I will use software 
metrics, such as McCabe's Complexity metric (That won't be the only 
one.) to guide me in selecting modules to instrument and test. This way, 
I hope to concentrate my limited resources on the areas that need the 
most attention.

The latest versions of Eclipse have the ability to interface directly 
with some bug tracking programs, like Bugzilla. I've also been able to 
interface, rather crudely, to the SourceForge bug tracking system, but 
can't yet figure out how to extract all the relevant information. The 
advantage of us using something like this, is that it allows us to track 
who is working on what at any given time. That could minimize conflicts. 
It also means we could track a bug or feature request from start to 
finish and even provide email updates to the user who reported the bug. 
It's something that, once setup, might make our work a lot more 
efficient. I'd like to find out what the rest of you think about such an 
idea. At the present point, I think we'd need to switch to bugzilla for 
tracking bugs, but beyond that, setting it up is rather easy.

Thanks,
  Ray

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft
Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2005.
http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/
_______________________________________________
Freemind-developer mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freemind-developer

Reply via email to