Dann, > > Thus, the best test > > team is a bunch of people doing unplanned things with the > > software, on a wide variety of platforms... > > That is the worst possible test plan. It totally lacks organization and > there is no hint to define when the feature set has been covered. Ad > hoc testing is a useful addition, but it cannot replace all the standard > tests that have been used by the industry for decades.
Them's fighting words, Mister. We have a test team ... a good test team ... I'm one of them. I have 7.4 CVS on 2 servers right now, and have loaded them with things I doubt Tom ever expected. You're directly insulting most of the people on this list. What's your motivation, exactly? Further, results argue against you. PostgreSQL's "ad-hoc" testing beats the formal testing of many large companies -- such as Microsoft. I professionally admin both PostgreSQL and MS SQL Server (which MS puts through a multi-million dollar testing proccess) ... guess which has less bugs, and less critical bugs? You're barging on this list, criticizing its members, pointing out problems where they don't exist, and not offering any help. Are you being paid by someone who doesn't like PostgreSQL, or do you just enjoy making enemies? > > Are you volunteering to create it? Step right up. > > No. And as an outsider, I rather doubt if any procedures I developed > would be taken very seriously. That's a pretty weak-ass excuse. If you're not offering to create or at least *work on* an expanded test suite, why are you wasting our time? According to you, your company has a elaborate testing procedure with numerous staff and (I would assume) some pretty comprehensive testing software. How about a donation? > A. Combine: <snip> > B. Automate: <snip> These parts sound pretty good. How about *you* create a test suite that does this? > C. Assign: > 1. Criteria for acceptance of a build for release > 2. Authority for acceptance of a build for release > 3. Delegation rules for issue resolution > 4. Procedures for issue resolution This sounds very corporate, and not in keeping with our OSS community. Our bug and patch submission process works pretty good right now; why monkey with what works? An OSS project that tries to assign people duties and jobs they don't want is a deserted and dead OSS project. You may know lots about automated testing, Dann, but you know squat-all about Open Source and about community relations. -- Josh Berkus Aglio Database Solutions San Francisco ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 8: explain analyze is your friend