Release criteria: kickstart

[Stephen John Smoogen]

On Thu, Aug 25, 2011 at 16:20, Adam Williamson <awilliam at redhat.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 2011-08-25 at 14:35 -0600, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
>> On Thu, Aug 25, 2011 at 14:25, Chris Lumens <clumens at redhat.com> wrote:
>> >> kickstart is a very broad area; you can write extremely complex
>> >> kickstart files that do a lot of stuff. So broadly what we'd need to do
>> >> is define a subset of kickstart functionality that we expect to work,
>> >> and then possibly divide that up by release phase (so some stuff must
>> >> work by Beta, the rest by Final, for e.g.)
>> >>
>> >> anaconda devs following this list, do you have any existing expectations
>> >> as to what level of kickstart functionality ought to be in place for
>> >> releases, and when you think would be appropriate?
>> >>
>> >> So far it seems everyone more or less agrees that it should be possible
>> >> to do at least a basic unattended kickstart install by Beta.
>> >
>> > You're right, kickstart is incredibly broad.  I don't think we could
>> > ever hope to come up with criteria to cover all of it.  I guess the best
>> > we can do is define criteria in terms of something else we already have.
>>
>> I would go for the classical kickstart test for Alpha:
>>
>> Does it take a minimal kickstart and build a default system. The
>> minimal being the exact stuff that would be created if a person just
>> clicked through a release.
>
> Oh, I like that. That's very good.
>
>> For Beta
>>
>> Take these X broken kickstarts, does it bail at the appropriate places.
>> Take these Y working kickstarts, does it work.
>> Where Y is a set of items that can be tested on say a KVM or a
>> "default" desktop defined somewhere.
>
> I'm not so keen on that; it's a bit specific. One of my fetishes with
> the criteria is to keep them generic so they don't have to keep being
> changed all the time; I wouldn't want a criterion to rely on some
> specific kickstart file we keep lying around somewhere.

Well I was trying to suggest something that wasn't handy-wavy. At some
point a set of criteria are going to be needed for what is expected
out anaconda at the minimum. From that criteria a set of test
kickstarts can be built. If they dont' work then you have a blocker.
Is that better?

-- 
Stephen J Smoogen.
"The core skill of innovators is error recovery, not failure avoidance."
Randy Nelson, President of Pixar University.
"Let us be kind, one to another, for most of us are fighting a hard
battle." -- Ian MacLaren