Craig Jackson wrote:
> I would love to help. I do have a couple of questions so we can
> hopefully be more effective at this.
Hi Craig. Thanks for the reply!
> 1. What are some examples of common issues that users have reported
> that you feel would benefit from a bit of automated testing? There
> will always be a need for ad-hoc, but automation can help with some of
> the more trivial sanity checks.
Well, the first thing that springs to mind is jhalfs. It seems that many
users jump right in to the automation, and if they haven't (or sometimes
if they have) used it before they'll hit some sort of wall. I'm hesitant
to provide too much guidance with jhalfs, because I'm afraid of helping
new ones miss the purpose of LFS entirely by doing so. That said, it is
always nice to have someone test the included versions of the LFS xml,
jhalfs, and the source packages to make sure that everything runs
without a hitch.
I'm not sure how to automate the testing of other aspects of the CDs,
but you could look at the included packages and see if you can't figure
out something yourself. :)
Other than that, to me, the biggest issue is hardware. We'd like to see
it tested on as many machines as possible.
> 2. I could work on scripts that do some basic sanity checks at
> runtime, but if that's already in place I could focus on some more
> feature-specific problem areas.
Feel free to draw something up. Nothing like that exists as of now that
I'm aware of.
> 3. Is it safe to assume that the results of testing the binaries and
> other files included in the "minimal" version should also apply to the
> X version? In other words, are the X+XFCE additions simply appended,
> or are modifications of the "minimal" cd required to build the X cd?
> This way, tests on the binaries in the "minimal" cd won't have to be
> run against the X cd since they have already been done in the
> "minimal" cd. (I hope I'm not too confusing here)
In theory, yes. In practical terms, we don't have a method in place
(yet) to ensure that both systems are using binaries that are 100%
alike. With the new development model we should be able to achieve that.
> 4. If it is decided that the LiveCD will have a package manager, how
> much can this be relied on when dropping in different versions of
> {libraries,binaries}?
I'm not quite sure what you mean here, but I get the feeling that a lot
of these questions will be answered once we have the new model in place.
I'm about to draw up another email that lists some more details about
how I'd like to see development happen on this project, so stay tuned.
> In the meantime, I guess I will get the latest dev release and poke
> around a bit more than I have in the past to get some ideas.
Yes, that would give you a heads start, though again, much of our
current setup may change in the near futre.
Alexander may also have some feedback for you, but as I said, perk up
your ears for more discussion on the new model. That should hopefully
make all of the above easier.
--
JH
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