PCF Testing

First off – I want to give a huge Thank You to everyone who took part in the rc0 testing. This is the best response we have ever had in terms of the number of times the build was downloaded and results reported.

Within the past week there have been a number of bug fixes. Release candidate 2 has been created and a new test run has been posted on litmus.pculture.org.

This run includes the Quicktest that you ran before, as well as another group called New Features and Bug Fixes. A few of these tests are a little more advanced and cover some of the functional areas that we have been improving.

Please Download 0.9.9.9-rc1 and select the 0.9.9.9-rc1 test run from litmus.

• Source: Miro-0.9.9.9-rc1.tar.gz
• Mac: Miro-0.9.9.9-rc1.dmg
• Windows: Miro-0.9.9.9-rc1.exe
• Litmus: 0.9.9.9-rc1 testrun

Thanks for all your help!

The big news for this week is the test of release candidate testing. Looks like we are getting some good download numbers and people running some of the litmus tests.

It would be great if we could get a lot of participation in this round of testing, and we are off to a good start. I will post updates here as new tests are created and available to run.

This week Matt put a lot of effort into getting Litmus up and running for us. Litmus is a test case management / QA tool created by the people at Mozilla. We have chosen to start using it to improve the presentation of the regression testing and results reporting.

You can check it out at litmus.pculture.org.

Currently there is a nightly test run configured and a testgroup called Quicktest. It is designed to be a very fast, easy way to check out a nightly build. Within a day or so, I will have the tests from the weekly testing page added into a group called New Features and Bug fixes.

Other than that – here is a quick list of the changes implemented this week that could use your attention. For any of this testing, I would recommend using the 20071015-nightly build for windows or mac or linux souce.

• Channels remember their searches
• Size and Date is displayed for watched folder items
• Only migrate items that were downloaded by Miro
• Change the first time startup dialog
• Changes to the video information displayed in the playback window

The full list and recommend test cases are posted on the weekly testing wiki page.

The team here at PCF recognizes the importance of testing and the value that it adds to a project. As I continually ask friends, family members and sometimes complete strangers to help out with the testing – I often suspect that people are a bit fearful about diving in.

“I’m not a tester”, “I don’t know how to write code”, “I never tested anything before.” These are some of the phrases that I regularly hear, and once and for all – I just want to say – It doesn’t matter.

In my opinion, anyone can be a tester. All you have to do is try a few things, maybe follow some instructions and report the results.

In order to be a Good tester, there are a few more standards, but perhaps not what you would expect

• Education… is completely irrelevant.
• Programming skills… we leave that up to the developers. One of our biggest concerns is the end user experience. If you, as a non-programmer, have trouble using or understanding Miro, that is a bug. It is preferred that you communicate your finding in a sentence or two.
• Courage… You have to be willing to try. If you find something that you think is a bug, report it or ask someone. Don’t be afraid to be wrong.
• Creativity… Look at what a particular feature does – then think about what else it might do, or could do, or should do. Then think of ways to make it do things that it shouldn’t do. Then, write it down, so someone else can expand on your ideas.
• Diligence… Testing isn’t always fun, and can sometimes be a little repetitious. But those regressions tests need to be run. The more people we have looking at the builds on a regular basis – the better Miro will be for everyone!

So – if you are ready to join us, sign up for the mailing list, or subscribe to this post, and say hello on the irc.

Weeks end: Summary for October 8, 2007

There was a fair amount of changes implemented this week. The main area that could use your attention is testing the migration of file storage.

Previously there were some errors with migration that would occur when a user would elect to change the storage location while playing a video. Ben has fixed this up and requested that it be tested on all platforms. There are some recommended tests for this in the weekly testing wiki page.

There were also some cosmetic changes implemented. If you are using a testing build you’ll see that new channels added now appear at the top of the list. This is also true for new playlists. A side effect of this has been some buggy behavior in the display of channels and channel folders.

Other visual changes include placing the auto download menu in a more prominent location. On Windows the length of the playing video is displayed on the right side of the progress bar.

For linux users, Nick implemented a way to change the xine driver via a command line option. That should be helpful to users who have issues with specific driver.

Please check out the complete list of changes on the weekly testing wiki page and say hello in the chatroom tomorrow and let us know what you think. If you are new to testing it is a great place to meet people and ask questions.

We have a new addition to our testing builds page. Starting today, we are regularly posting the source for any and all of our dedicated linux testers.

Here is a link to the build docs for any extra info you might need.

Weeks end: Summary for October 1, 2007

Note for anyone who has noticed the date above: it seems slightly more practical to me that the testing week concludes on a Monday rather than begins. So in that spirit, I will use this space to summarize the changes that have been implemented between Mondays (even though I am well aware that today is Tuesday).

The most significant addition is the implementation of thumbnail generation and length extraction. For Windows this was tried before but resulted in crashes and unstable behavior and had to be pulled from prior releases.

The developers have changed their approach and now use a separate process. The change is also being implemented for linux and os x. If you are interested in the technical information, you can read about it in the MovieDataProcess wiki.

If you want to help test out this feature, there are some test cases in the new Weekly Testing wiki page.

Weekly Releases

The new Weekly Testing wiki page is meant to complement this blog. It contains more details about the latest changes to the release, suggested test cases and known issues. I encourage anyone who wants to help to take the recommended build from the nightlies page and work through the tests.

Additionally – you can edit the page with additional tests you have run or believe should be run. Once things have been wrung out – I will use the information there to update the official test cases for Miro.

Your involvement at this stage of the process will really help prevent defects and provide necessary input to the development team.