Fedora Test Project

[Miles Lane]

When I worked at Microsoft, I ran stress and functionality test suites
every night on new Windows NT builds.  The cool thing about the
process was the level of automation and the use of remote debugging by
developers.  The way it worked was that testers would have a debugging
machine attached to the test machine via a serial cable.  The
debugging machine had all the kernel and application symbols
downloaded.  Whenever an application or the kernel crashed or reported
errors, the debuggin machine would load the needed symbols and dump
the stacktrace.  Then, the tester could perform some preliminary
debugging, and locate the associated developer.  Then the developer
would attack to the debegging machine over an internet connection and
debug the client.  If I recall correctly, the debugging machine would
automatically submit a summary of any problems via e-mail, so
developers could attach and debug without testers intervening.
Obviously, this requires testers who can dedicate a machine to being a
testing client, a fast network connection for downloading symbols and
updates, etc.

Is it possible for us to do something similar?  The WinNT test suites
covered pretty much everything, file systems, memory, video, I/O,
network, printing, desktop functionality, applications, process
management, etc.

On 6/9/06, Will Woods <wwoods at redhat.com> wrote:
> Hello!
>
> So, as you may have heard, Red Hat announced (at the Summit last week in
> Nashville) that they are planning to submit an Open Source testing
> project to the Fedora Board. They also intend to release a bunch of
> their tests and testing tools, and they really want to work with the
> Fedora community to help improve the state of QA in both Fedora and Open
> Source Software as a whole.
>
> This proposed project is still in its early stages, but it goes a lot
> further than just Red Hat releasing some of their tools. We are trying
> to start a project to develop and maintain a wide variety of test tools,
> tests, and test processes - everything you'd need to test an entire
> operating system like Fedora Core.
>
> The first step (and, in my opinion, it's a big one) is that Red Hat will
> give us part of their automated test system and a big chunk of the tests
> that go with it. They want to work with us to establish a test lab to
> run those tests on Fedora Core + Extras. They'll also give us
> documentation on the test APIs so we can write our own tests for
> Fedora-specific things. We hope to get these things working during the
> FC6 test releases and providing useful information to developers and
> users alike.
>
> In the future we intend to develop and release more tools and work on
> test processes for other parts of Fedora. We want programs Fedora users
> can run to report bugs and help with testing. And we don't want this to
> be restricted to Fedora - We want tools and tests that will work with
> all Open Source software.
>
> Oh, and the project will need a name. "Fedora Test Project" just doesn't
> cut it. And it abbreviates to "FTP". Ugh! Boring *and* confusing!
>
> Red Hat's started the project here: http://testing.108.redhat.com/
>
> I'm really excited about all this. My personal goal for this project is
> to never hear anyone say "Fedora is just Red Hat's beta test product"
> again. Help make this dream a reality!
>
> -w
>
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