Community testing meetings/2008-10-30

This is a pre-meeting agenda. The meeting is in #olpc-meeting on October 30, 2008 at 2100 UTC. Please add suggestions for agenda items to this page - we may not get to everything, but we can make sure to have a list for discussion in future meetings. If you can't make the meeting, please post your thoughts here in the appropriate section, and I'll make sure they're brought up during the meeting. Mchua 01:43, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Previous meeting's action items

None; this is our first meeting.

Activity testing

We've been asked to tackle Activity testing as a first Big Task - we thought we'd try an Activity of the Week format, starting with Analyze (thank you Eduardo!) because that Activity itself would be a useful tool for testers to get log data from.

I think we need a 2-pass process; one "rough pass" week where people clean up the Activity's page, feature list, test cases, etc to make them testable by the general public - see http://wiki.laptop.org/index.php?title=Analyze&oldid=115198 and then compare to the current Analyze, and then see http://wiki.laptop.org/index.php?title=Tests/Activity/Analyze&oldid=166270 and compare to Tests/Activity/Analyze.

• Thoughts?
• Volunteers to help finish cleaning up Analyze for release to testing public?
• Suggestions for next Activities to test (or good criteria for selecting one?) I was thinking Log.

Mchua

Test tools

We've got some neat ones that could use some work/help. Some details below are definitely fuzzy; please ask questions on things that aren't clear and I'll do my best to fill the details in before the meeting.

• XO Monitor
• Cjb's screencast Activity (no wiki page yet)
• a Test Activity - this is still a vague idea, but some sort of "submit a bug report!" helper
• Finding a way to have XOs more easily (...automatically?) upload test logs to Some Central Server That Is As Of Yet Undefined
• Reuben's "configuration magic" scripts (soon to be in git)
• Others?

(Note that we might discuss this in a future meeting if we run out of time)

Mchua 01:43, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Test automation

• This is a big deal. We need a lot of work/help here.
• Ideas? Suggestions?

(Note that we might discuss this in a future meeting if we run out of time)

Mchua 01:43, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Tests that are hard for volunteers to replicate

• Volunteers who don't have XOs
• Volunteers who don't have many XOs

Ok, so things like "50 XO collaboration" are probably not testable by many people... how can (should?) we still keep you up to date on what is going on with testing in the office?

What can you still test without "equipment?"

What tools/equipment/infrastructure/support/encouragement/resources can we provide - both from OLPC, and from volunteers to each other - to help get testing done? LiveCDs and emulators? What do we think is worth our effort to create/maintain, given that everyone has limited resources and time?

(Note that we might discuss this in a future meeting if we run out of time)

Mchua 01:43, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Learning and teaching testing

Some people have expressed a desire to use this group as a way/motivation to study testing, as a way of building skill - I'd like to get out some ideas for how we might do that; we've had some very generous volunteers who've offered to help teach/mentor new testers in the community.

Mchua 01:43, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Some notes on infrastructure

Think of these all as strawmen to be tried out now, revised next week if needed. Mchua

• Meeting time/place/format?
• Meeting ground rules?

Purpose/charter/mission of community test

We won't finish this discussion on the first meeting. We'll barely even start it. But we can get some thoughts on on the table. I'd like to spend no more than 10 minutes just hearing initial thoughts on this - no judgement, no decisions, just ideas - and send the conversation to the mailing list to get thoughts going in the background as we continue to test. I think this conversation will make much more sense in several weeks once we've gotten a working idea of how we, as a community test group, function.

Mchua