Versionning vs. Community Testing

[Phil]

Hello guys,

I've read all the related pages about contributing to In-Portal, and
asking community to use and understand SVN and/or Tortoise is not in
our favor.

I read all messages posted in dev and bug groups, and most of them are
about functionnality that users can effectively test. But when a user
want to test the result of a patch, it's time consumming to install
and use all theses tools.

I'm one of this users, who spend many hours everyday testing and
reporting carefully all bugs to improve interface, and at the same
time, I'd like to install theses patched kernel to test them. But
installing isn't possible if I don't spend time applying patches, and
moving files for testing on live websites. Sadly an average day is
only 24 hours long...

I'm asking you to provide, whatever you'll call it, a place where we
can download a full package, updated weekly, for example. All major
software companies are doing the same for their community, why we
don't? If you think my opinion is not the average one, please use Poll
function to have opinion from others :-)

Phil.

[Dmitry Andrejev]

Hi Phil,

Thanks for your email - yes I totally understand what you mean.

Yes, we going to add "snapshots" functionality, but it's quite important to understand that "snapshots" are taken from SVN repository while Patches for bug fixes/features are NOT yet committed into the Code Repository (were the snapshots are taken from) until TESTED by some other developer (who didn't participate in work on that task/bug).

It's like right now we have completed ALL tasks for 5.0.3 (patches attached to the tasks), but going through tests to make sure it works before we even commit the code in the Repository.

This is how the process looks like from development point:

DISCUSS => REPORT => PATCH => TEST => COMMIT

Only once committed it will be available for checkout and will be available in "snapshots" once we implement this.

The main problem here is a factor that there are too few of us who can test using patches...

Here is what I think will be the best:

1. Do implement spanshots so anyone can download development version and test.

2. We'll teach you how to use SVN, setup local Linux Virtual Machine on your PC (Windows) so you can do local installs and patches for us.

Let me know how that sounds? :)

DA.

[Phil ..:: domicilis.biz ::..]

Hi Dmitry,

that's sound good to me, I was missing the right word to explain all: snapshot !

About testing, I can do a lot of tests as all my actual websites + all
in dev let me test nearly all modules. I've started a project using
In-Link this week, that's why I've reported some bugs, and you'll have
a bunch of other reports today. I ask for snapshot, as I do very deep
tests when I put my hands on a module, and I'd like to have latest
modules, avoiding to report corrected bugs, and to find maybe some
issues related to new features.

For example, you have done a good work implementing multisite feature,
which is something really important against competitors, but I haven't
been able to test it yet, a snapshot including this would be good.

thanks,
Phil.

2010/3/17 Dmitry Andrejev <dand...@gmail.com>:

[Alexander Obuhovich]

So it's time for you to learn how to use new tools, like TortoiseSVN and TortoiseMerge. That's really easy, and allows to apply patches to any version of code you have. That's more useful, then snapshots, because you can apply new functionality without need to upgrade at all. At you own risk of course.

--
Best Regards,

http://www.in-portal.com
http://www.alex-time.com

[Phil ..:: domicilis.biz ::..]

Of course I'll also install and use these tools, thanks for your recent help.

2010/3/17 Alexander Obuhovich <aik....@gmail.com>:

[Phil]

I had another idea :)

Should it be posssible to post, along with patch files, a download
link for the patched file(s)? I see a lot of patches involving only 1
or 2 files, and this could be the fastest way to integrate them for
testing.

The reason for this is that it could be faster and more reliable to
test patches on website in production, I have a lots of, but none of
them are under SVN of course...

On 17 mar, 11:45, "Phil ..:: domicilis.biz ::.." <p...@domicilis.biz>
wrote:

> Of course I'll also install and use these tools, thanks for your recent help.
>

> 2010/3/17 Alexander Obuhovich <aik.b...@gmail.com>:

>
> > So it's time for you to learn how to use new tools, like TortoiseSVN and
> > TortoiseMerge. That's really easy, and allows to apply patches to any
> > version of code you have. That's more useful, then snapshots, because you
> > can apply new functionality without need to upgrade at all. At you own risk
> > of course.
>
> > On Wed, Mar 17, 2010 at 12:13 PM, Phil ..:: domicilis.biz ::..
> > <p...@domicilis.biz> wrote:
>
> >> Hi Dmitry,
>
> >> that's sound good to me, I was missing the right word to explain all:
> >> snapshot !
>
> >> About testing, I can do a lot of tests as all my actual websites + all
> >> in dev let me test nearly all modules. I've started a project using
> >> In-Link this week, that's why I've reported some bugs, and you'll have
> >> a bunch of other reports today. I ask for snapshot, as I do very deep
> >> tests when I put my hands on a module, and I'd like to have latest
> >> modules, avoiding to report corrected bugs, and to find maybe some
> >> issues related to new features.
>
> >> For example, you have done a good work implementing multisite feature,
> >> which is something really important against competitors, but I haven't
> >> been able to test it yet, a snapshot including this would be good.
>
> >> thanks,
> >> Phil.
>

> >> 2010/3/17 Dmitry Andrejev <dandre...@gmail.com>:

[Dmitry Andrejev]

Hi Phil,

I see that you are still trying to skip the learning curve here :)

Here are a few notes in regards to your idea:

a. when we have patch attached to the task - in most cases it's NOT committed into Repository yet so you can't download the file.

b. it's not a;ways the best way to patch your sites just to test the bug if they are not in any kind of repository themselves. you can patch by hand, but I recommend running test versions from the In-Portal repository - test bug / patches there and then you can upload updated files to life sites.

As you can see in all cases you need to be flexible with SVN tools (again easy) in order to be active tester / developer and get things before general public does.

I hope it makes sense to you.

DA.

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[Phil ..:: domicilis.biz ::..]

Dmitry,

a. yes, it's not commited to repository, that's wy I ask this. I
doesn't seems to much work, and I can do it by myself, it was just an
idea to save time.

b. despite the fact that we are all working a lot to find bugs, we
need live tests to find more, for example, we haven't seen that
gateways were not able to complete a payment, because In-Portal become
more and more powerfull everyday, testing all features for each
release would be a full time job ! Live tests are for me the best
thing, as in-portal is meant to go live, thanks to my customers whom
aren't too much angry when something doesn't work like it should :-)

c. I'm not trying to escape SVN use, but I can't play with SVN for all
my installs. Just for testing and dev. purpose, I'm using about 3-4
differents local and server-side installs... I can't spend all my time
maintening files, not enough hours in a day :(

Does this make sense to you?

2010/3/21 Dmitry Andrejev <dand...@gmail.com>:

[Alexander Obuhovich]

Then use "patch" linux command to apply patches as you've intended from first post.

[Phil ..:: domicilis.biz ::..]

allright, I won't ask more here, this is not as important as our other
discussions.

2010/3/21 Alexander Obuhovich <aik....@gmail.com>:

[Dmitry Andrejev]

Hi Phil,

Yes, make sense, but I want something to add here.

a. We can't commit anything to the Repository until it's tested. That's why we NEED you to have your copy of 5.0.x to be able to test there first, then you can upload to the clients site from your.

b. We all busy, but can't skip important step of testing.

c. You need to have 1 local clean installation from SVN checkout for each version you have (5.0.0, 5.0.1 and so on) - test there and then upload to the client.

Thanks.

DA.

[Phil ..:: domicilis.biz ::..]

That's why I'll do, no pb, nothing else to add here, and thank you for
time spent in explanations :-)