pcplantdb

[Stephanie Gerson <sgerson@stanfordalumni.org>]

Will the public (or our testers) be able to submit bugs?  Just curious.
*s

------ Original Message ------
Received: 01:05 PM PST, 01/24/2005
From: John Schinnerer <john@eco-living.net>
To: Permaculture Plant Database <pcplantdb@lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: [pcplantdb] Issue tracker, versions

Aloha,

I am just needing to make time to do some relatively minor (I hope) 
customization on Roundup issue tracker to suit our project tracking needs.

Given my current context, it will be a week or more.

When I get it configured I'll open it for initial use and testing - 
everyone can make themselves an account and start playing with/using it. 
   That will flush out bugs in use and/or customization, questions, 
requests, etc.

Considerable Roundup customization allegedly can be done without 
affecting existing data (except of course for removing data elements), 
so if it works as advertised we can use it even as I tweak whatever 
needs tweaking after we start using it.

> Also, how do we want to seperate our test and live versions or can we
> just tell everyone that our live version is a test?

I strongly suggest going with typical open source distinctions of

Stable version
Testing version
Development (Unstable) version

..or at least the first one and one of the other two (see below for 
more on difference).

Stable I would put at the live public site, e.g. permaculture.info

Testing I would put at a subdomain (3rd level) like

testing.permaculture.info

or similar.

Approximate definitions:

Stable means an official code release that's been through the 'normal' 
testing process, and though there are bugs, none are critical, blocking 
or crash bugs and all advertised features for that version are present 
and working (except for possible minor issues not caught in 'normal' 
testing).

Testing means the most recent official code release, not yet finished 
with the 'normal' testing process but on the way through it.  May have 
critical/crash bugs but should be few in number and not hose up the 
larger infrastructure (e.g. bring down the server, etc. :-o).

Development/Unstable means current development source code, not an 
official release but actually in the process of development, changing 
day to day or even moment to moment as development proceeds.  May have 
multiple critical/crash bugs, be DOA, etc.

Given our small dev team at present, I don't see any reason to even have 
a publicly accessible dev/unstable version.  You guys can decide how you 
want to handle source code integrity for dev version (CVS, etc.).

Testing we want public so that the larger community can bang on it and 
help find bugs, etc. as well as see 'almost prime time' new features and 
so on.

Stable we want public as our "current best" for people to use and be 
impressed by (and of course flush out the occasional additional bug, 
make feature requests, etc.).

That's my take on it from QA/Test perspective.
John S.


-- 

John Schinnerer - MA, Whole Systems Design
------------------------------------------
- Eco-Living -
Whole Systems Design Services
People - Place - Learning - Integration
john@eco-living.net
http://eco-living.net
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+++++++++++++++
Stephanie Gerson
sgerson@stanfordalumni.org
(c) 415.871.5683


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