[Koha-devel] Proposal for Assistance with QA Testing for Koha 3.6

[Marcel de Rooy]

FWIW:
I personally would welcome Paul as assistant QAM.
But I do not think that QAM should "deputize" others without consent of the community.
QAM and assistants could be elected on a meeting.
In this case I would suggest to let Paul start and make it formal on the next meeting.
________________________________
Van: koha-devel-bounces at lists.koha-community.org [koha-devel-bounces at lists.koha-community.org] namens Ian Walls [ian.walls at bywatersolutions.com]
Verzonden: dinsdag 2 augustus 2011 19:04
Aan: koha-devel at lists.koha-community.org
Onderwerp: [Koha-devel] Proposal for Assistance with QA Testing for Koha 3.6

Dear Community,


As you are likely aware, I am the elected Quality Assurance Manager for the 3.6 release.  As you may also be aware, there are currently 96 patches in Bugzilla that are signed off and ready for QA testing (at the time of this writing).  My goal for my term as QAM was to keep this list under 10, but as we can see, that's not the current state of things.

I do not want to become a bottleneck against good code getting into Koha.  Quality Assurance is by it's nature a painstaking process, especially with more complex patches, to ensure that there are no regressions of functionality, or massive, unexpected shifts in default behavior.  Often, numerous configurations of data need to checked against, to make sure fixing a bug for one possible setup doesn't cause a new bug in another.  So far, we've not had to pull any code from master due to a regression, so it seems this process is working.  But, that said, we've still got nearly a hundred patches waiting in the queue.

Paul Poulain has offered to assist me with QA for the remainder of the Koha 3.6 release cycle.  He's got the hours to dedicate towards this, and can help put some of these patches through their paces.  While anyone can test any patch that's been published (and everyone is encouraged to do so), Paul is asking for the additional power to mark the patches he's tested as "Passed QA" if they do indeed pass his tests.  Here are the exact terms of the proposal:

a) he would not mark any patch he himself has written as Passed QA
b) any patch written by BibLibre would need a signoff from another, external person before he'd test it
c) he would start with the patches that have been waiting the longest
d) the QAM and RM could reject any "Passed QA" patch if they feel it's not sufficient for whatever reason (which would need to be noted in the bug report)

I do not feel that I necessarily have the right to transfer the "mark patches as Passed QA" power over to another person without the community's consent.  So, I bring this to the group.  Is this an acceptable proposal?  Does the QAM have the right to "deputize" community members and transfer this particular power, or does the community need to vote on it?  Are there any aspects of the issue that I'm missing?

Thanks for your consideration and attention on this matter,



-Ian



--
Ian Walls
Lead Development Specialist
ByWater Solutions
Phone # (888) 900-8944
http://bywatersolutions.com
ian.walls at bywatersolutions.com<mailto:ian.walls at bywatersolutions.com>
Twitter: @sekjal
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