[maemo-community] How to use extras-testing correctly?

[From: Jeremiah Foster]

On Sep 16, 2009, at 14:15, Till Harbaum wrote:

> Hi,
>
> i have been asked to upload osm2go to extras-testing. It's not quite  
> clear to
> me how this is actually supposed to work. I see several possibilities:
>
> 1) Just upload something. Others will do some testing and i can upload
> a fixed version of they see problems. The new version will then go  
> though
> the same testing again. This is how i think it was initially meant  
> to work.

Yes, this is what happens. Please see http://wiki.maemo.org/Extras-testing 
  for more information.

>
> 2) Upload only things that have gone through my own testing to  
> increase
> the likeliness that it will go straight through testing without any  
> problems.
> This is the way i will use it.

Sounds good.

> I see several problems with 1):
>
> - If something broken doesn't pass the tests and i keep uploading new
> versions people will likely get tired of me and my perhaps perfect
> version will stay in testing forever because nobody wants to test my
> app over and over again

The testing is designed to check policy (at least my testing is, there  
are other tests as well) but it will not necessarily stop your upload,  
just produce a report indicating 'best practices'. Best practices are  
something we can all agree on; things that ease the user's experience  
of installing packages and make the developer's life easier too.

>
> - If something broken actually passes the testing things get even  
> worse
> as a bug fix has to go through testing again and the broken version  
> will
> stay there until the bug fix passes testing
>
> To me this means two things:
>
> 1) don't update too often, so people/testers don't get bored
> 2) put some extensive internal testing before promoting something
> to extras-testing
>
> This also means that i will delay the promotion of  osm2go as i am  
> currently
> running my own tests.
>
> I somehow think this is not the way it should work ... Any ideas how  
> to use
> it in a more efficient way?

I think if we emulate the debian quality assurance methodology that  
might be good. Ideally, you'll run the tests on your package locally  
_before_ you upload to the builder, this would be like using linitan  
in debian. I am not sure how the builder tests and Niel's tests will  
work, but I am certain those can be explained by the people working on  
them.

Jeremiah