G1G1 Activity testing

  This page is part of the OLPC Community testing Project. How to test an Activity | Reporting test results | Meetings

Goal

Get all G1G1-2008 Activities tested by Dec. 25, 2008.

There are several goals for this project.

1. Stress-test a good community testing participation framework.
2. Create a solid notion of what it means to "test an Activity," and how to do that.
3. Get OLPC used to giving the Community testing team the resources they need to work on what they want to work on.
4. And of course, get G1G1 Activities tested so that teachers, students, XO-deployers, Support gang volunteers, developers, etc. can make good decisions about what to use and what to fix and what to make based on solid knowledge of how our software measures up against their expectations.

How to help

Preparation

There are some things we need to do to finish up the infrastructure.

1. We need to specify the form fields in http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?key=pyBIsSK_3IlsHBpwk1EFNcQ completely (as garycmartin pointed out, what exactly does "Tester" mean? Wiki username, email address, etc.?) By that, I mean if you're the first one running through the form who says "it is ambiguous what I should input here, what should I do?" decide it ("Name = Wiki username!"), edit the form to reflect it, and then put in your results.

In order to do this, we need to all have edit privs on the spreadsheet - who can post (to the list and the wiki, http://wiki.laptop.org/go/G1G1_Activity_testing#Smoke_testing) instructions on how to edit the form itself?

Pia (greebo) has offered to help with this.

2. We need to find the semantic mediawiki testcases for every activity in http://wiki.laptop.org/go/G1G1_Activity_testing#Progress and hook them into that table. http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Category:Test_cases has most of them. Joachim (joachimp) has offered to help with this.

What does this mean?

Look at this query: http://wiki.laptop.org/index.php?title=G1G1_Activity_testing&action=edit&section=11

It creates this table, which is automatically filled in with the information that the query asks for. http://wiki.laptop.org/go/G1G1_Activity_testing#Activity_info

We need to turn this table, which is manually/statically generated... http://wiki.laptop.org/go/G1G1_Activity_testing#Progress_table

...into a table that pulls from the following properties from http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Template:Activity_page:

|ready for testing= |smoke tested= |test plan available= |test plan executed= |developer response to testing=

These are all (currently) booleans. Since no value is currently set for any of these properties for any Activity, the entire table should be filled with "False""False""False"etc. (Bonus points: instead of or in addition to displaying "False," color the table cell red. Mega bonus points: display a dragon.*)

3. We need to, when applicable, edit/reformat the semantic mediawiki testcases for the Activities listed in http://wiki.laptop.org/go/G1G1_Activity_testing#Progress so that they /can/ be hooked into that table. Joachim (joachimp) has offered to help with this.

What does that mean?

Look at this form: http://wiki.laptop.org/index.php?title=Help_(activity)&action=formedit Notice it has textboxes, checkboxes, etc. that you can easily fill out. We want to have, on that form, true/false checkboxes (Type:Boolean) that let you fill in info for the following properties from http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Template:Activity_page:

|ready for testing=
|smoke tested=
|test plan available=
|test plan executed=
|developer response to testing=

When this works, checking any of those boxes for an Activity should result in the cell for that test for that Activity in http://wiki.laptop.org/go/G1G1_Activity_testing#Progress saying "True" instead of "False" (bonus points: the cell should turn green or some other happy-looking color, or display a pony.*)

*If you _actually_ make this display ponies and dragons, I will personally bake and ship you cookies.

These steps will make it much easier to run the remainder of the steps (though they can be carried out in parallel).

Ready for testing

This means the Activity has reached a point in its development where it is runnable and testable by people other than the maintainer. All of the G1G1 Activities should have this set to "true" (just go and set it to true, because it is).

Smoke tested

Go through Activity smoke testing for your Activity, then mark this property as true.

Test plans available

Create or edit a test plan for the Activity you're testing. This is often the hardest part of testing an Activity: the question you might ask yourself is "what are the things I want to find out about this Activity?" and then write a test case to find out about each.

A test plan is made of one or more test cases; test cases can be black box, white box, exploratory, or use any other methodology you like. See for examples of test cases; Tests/Activity/Analyze is a good example of a very thorough test case, Tests/Activity/Paint is a smoke-test-like test case, and Tests/Activity/EToys/Mp3 is a stub test case meant to verify the absence of a bug.

When you are satisfied with the test plans you have available for your Activity, mark this property as True.

Test plans executed

Execute the test cases listed in the test plan for that Activity. When all tests for that Activity have been executed, mark this property as True.

Make sure you have the right version of the Activity you're testing before you start to test it! The Activity version should be the one listed on http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activities/G1G1/8.2, and you can check the version you have (in 8.2.0) by putting your Home screen in list view - the number to the right of the Activity name is the version number. (For instance, the link points to a screenshot that shows Assimilate at version 10 and Physics at version 1.)

Developers responded

Contact the listed maintainer for the Activity with your test results, and ask them what they'd like to do; when you get acknowledgment from the maintainer that they received your message (and hopefully want to work with you to respond to the results of your testing), mark this property as True.

Activity list

The key activities we want to test are the "G1G1" activity group for Release 8.2.0. The page that Software update accesses for this is Activities/G1G1/8.2.

As of 2008-12-04, those activities are:

Help activity | Browse | Read | Write | Paint | Record | TamTamJam | TamTamEdit | TamTamSynthLab | TamTamMini | Chat | Pippy | Etoys | Turtle Art | Calculate | Measure | Distance | Memorize | Implode | Maze | Moon | Ruler | Scratch | Speak | WikiBrowse English | Terminal | Log | Analyze

FYI, compared with the older G1G1 activity pack for Release 8.1.0, the G1G1 activity group for 8.2.0 adds Help activity, Implode, Maze, Moon, Ruler, Scratch, and WikiBrowse English; it removes NewsReader.

Progress table

Our goal: this entire table, green.

Activity name/wiki page	ready for testing	smoke tested	test plan available	test plan executed	developer response
Help
Browse
Read
Write
Paint
Record
TamTamJam
TamTamEdit
TamTamSynthLab
TamTamMini
Chat
Pippy
Etoys
Turtle Art
Calculate
Measure
Distance
Memorize
Implode
Maze
Moon
Ruler
Scratch
Speak
WikiBrowse English
Terminal
Log
Analyze

Activity info

This is a handy cheat sheet for people who are testing Activities or trying to decide what Activities to test, and who want to quickly find information about multiple Activities at once.

Query all activities with Property:Activity group of Activities/G1G1 — should match except for the four TamTam activities!

Activity pages can hold info for more than one bundle, if so then one of these Property:Activity versions (possibly the biggest number) is the best version for 8.2.0.

{{#ask:

 Activity group::Activities/G1G1
 |?Contact person
 |?Team member=Team member(s)
 |?Activity genre
 |?Activity version
 |default=No activities with Property:Activity group of Activities/G1G1??!

}}

(Note that you can't just list 20 activities in a query — [[ Help activity || Browse || Read || Write || ... ]] — seems to break if you list too many)