Re: Interested in becoming a PHP/QA Team Member

Olivier Doucet wrote:

Hi, This subject started as "being a QA team member", but I think this can be also treated as "What is the QA team". I'll speak about my personal case, because I think many people can share this point of view. I started reviewing php code and php tests when PHP 5.3 was "usable", because I needed some 5.3 features for a big project. I was (and still is) the project leader on this project, and my first task was to choose whether to use 5.3 or not, considering primarily the stability of the sapi. Then I discovered the mailing list and all the hard work done so far. I knew in a minute that I could help this community because I'm able to take a few hours a month dedicated to QA in PHP because this is directly connected to my project. A stable PHP is vital to me (and to everybody!). As my knowledge in C/C++ is non-existent, the QA came to be a good way to help PHP, as it can be done only with PHP skills. - But - I felt lost on all those projects connected to PHPQA, and this is the majors questions I had : ** How to help ?

      Writing tests ? Writing/conceiving tools ? Send daily output of run-tests in latest cvs ?

** Where to help ?

      Use only the mailing list ? Completing the wiki ?

** Where to start ?

      What are the priorities ? Writing tests on a specific module ? Reviewing tests ? Completing wiki ? ...

The result was a big mess: I think I haven't done enough for QA, because I didn't know what to do and where to start. This is good feedback - thank you

Maybe I can help by bringing ideas ? ;) To my mind, I think the QA should be very more efficient with good tools. I'm thinking about: - Completing the wiki to show priorities, current projects, etc. (lots of links are sent in this mailing list (about testfest gcov for example) and I couldn't find any infos on the wiki).

- Tests sending/reviewing/testing (more easily than "send it to the ml, wait for comments, wait for commit, etc.") => can be useful for all people who fear sending something to the ml. I was in that case first, I didn't knew if you bite or not :) We addressed this a bit with the TestFest subversion repository - and TestFest in general. I'm not sure there is a good answer here apart from the mailing list. Stefan suggested keeping the SVN repository open after the end of TestFest - but I'm not convinced this is teh right answer

- run-tests output compare (not just a mailing list). I discovered this was part of a GSOC project ;) This is a very big task and I think there is more to it than will be covered in the GSOC project. The project will just get as far as producing output from run-tests in a consumable (XML probably) format. What happens to the test output after that is still open for discussion and planning.

Now to come back to the initial question : What does it mean "being part of QA team" ? Is this helping with these tasks ? If I wrote only one test, am I a QA team member? And of course : "Where to start in this jungle of "todo" things? :) Writing a list of the to-dos on the wiki would be a good place to start. Do you have access to the wiki already? If not you can apply for it, click the login button and it should take you to somewhere that you can request an ID.

Hope this helps (and is not entirely off-subject :p). No, it's good - thanks

Zoe