Re: [Geany-Devel] Helping Geany move forward: testing
On Sat, Apr 29, 2017 at 2:58 PM, Lex Trotman wrote: > The vast majority are therefore not testing anything in master prior > to release, so they are not helping stabilise the release. Thats no > help. (Of course users are not expected to help stabilise the > release). By the way, I think it might be a good idea to call on users for more testing. Many of them must be technical people who wouldn't be scared by Git and may be interested in improvements. At least on Linux, it's (relatively) easy to build Geany from Git and run it with a copy of one's normal config. So it's easy and safe to try PRs out at least briefly. I mean, at the moment geany.org doesn't even mention testing in its "Contribute" sections. -- Vasiliy ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.geany.org https://lists.geany.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: [Geany-Devel] Helping Geany move forward: testing
... >> I have to agree with Matthew that: >> >> 1. Nobody wants to break master because its what everybody is using. >> Problem is that if we had a development branch nobody would be using >> it because it might break, so its insufficiently tested. I don't have >> a solution to that. > > > master *is* the development branch. It's not a stable branch that must not > be broken at all costs. It's also not true that everyone is using master. > The vast majority is using releases, and in fact we do regular releases so > that we can use master as a true development branch. The vast majority are therefore not testing anything in master prior to release, so they are not helping stabilise the release. Thats no help. (Of course users are not expected to help stabilise the release). > Even I don't use master > (a very regular contributor) for my clone that I use daily. I always fork > the last release, merge my changes, and backport individual commits from > master (via cherry-pick). Of course I develop features based on master, so I > do test the master branch on a regular basis. So you don't do much testing of any changes in master, except those you choose to backport to your day to day version, or that you happen to use when testing your own Geany development. Some of us do use git HEAD (or close to, I'm a bit behind ATM) so we do check what will be in the next release, at least for those things in our normal workflow. Otherwise if nobody used HEAD it would be extremely lightly tested come release time. Besides emacs and atom I havn't looked at how other editor projects do it. But certainly emacs has most of their devs using HEAD or close to it, and they also try to be careful about what they commit. But of course thats not a github project so they get fewer external contributions and most have been through mailing list hell before they get applied. Atom takes a different approach of being very modular and having each part in a separate repository, over 200 according to their CONTRIBUTING.md. Therefore its more akin to geany-plugins, where individual parts can be easily handled separately. And they seem to make heavy use of feature branches in the main repos. Don't think that will work with a monolithic C application like Geany. > > So yes, if you are afraid of doing development on the development branch, > it's clear that we're struggling to get anything done. Sure, one can expect > that PRs are perfect before getting merged, but the current situation shows > that this is not working if you want to get something done in a timely > manner. It seems that the result of what you are advocating is to release less tested more buggy versions? Or am I misunderstanding the result? > > From another angle, both of you could easily create a development branch. > But you didn't so far. Anyway, how is that workflow supposed to work? If > lots of PRs go through an intermediate branch then merging that intermediate > branch into master is going to be a nightmare too. Which is also true and another reason its not done that way. Cheers Lex > > Best regards. > > > ___ > Devel mailing list > Devel@lists.geany.org > https://lists.geany.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.geany.org https://lists.geany.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: [Geany-Devel] Helping Geany move forward: testing
Am 29.04.2017 um 02:35 schrieb Lex Trotman: On 29 April 2017 at 09:55, Matthew Brush wrote: On 2017-04-28 02:35 PM, Thomas Martitz wrote: Am 27.04.2017 um 22:51 schrieb Vasiliy Faronov: Hi all, From discussions elsewhere, such as [1], it sounds like one of the things holding back Geany development right now is a need for more testing. Helping to test PRs is truly needed, and much appreciated. However, I do think that Geany lacks also actual developers that cna merge stuff. I feel the current team is afraid of merging non-trivial changes, leaving even semi-complex patches to Colomban. Unfortunately Colomban has little time these days, too, so we're kind of stuck. There are lots of PRs that have recent activity from the authors and are tested appropriately but still don't get attention from developers. My general problem is that we don't have a unstable/development branch per se, nor proper automated testing, and I don't want to break master so I won't merge a single thing without testing it thoroughly myself. This can turn a 5-10 minute merge into a several hours or more testing session, requiring special setups and re-compiling Geany on 3 different OSes, etc. I have to agree with Matthew that: 1. Nobody wants to break master because its what everybody is using. Problem is that if we had a development branch nobody would be using it because it might break, so its insufficiently tested. I don't have a solution to that. master *is* the development branch. It's not a stable branch that must not be broken at all costs. It's also not true that everyone is using master. The vast majority is using releases, and in fact we do regular releases so that we can use master as a true development branch. Even I don't use master (a very regular contributor) for my clone that I use daily. I always fork the last release, merge my changes, and backport individual commits from master (via cherry-pick). Of course I develop features based on master, so I do test the master branch on a regular basis. So yes, if you are afraid of doing development on the development branch, it's clear that we're struggling to get anything done. Sure, one can expect that PRs are perfect before getting merged, but the current situation shows that this is not working if you want to get something done in a timely manner. From another angle, both of you could easily create a development branch. But you didn't so far. Anyway, how is that workflow supposed to work? If lots of PRs go through an intermediate branch then merging that intermediate branch into master is going to be a nightmare too. Best regards. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.geany.org https://lists.geany.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/devel
