Things we learned from CentOS 5

This page is here to discuss (and improve) the QA process of CentOS 5. Just add what you think we should have done differently.

• Test rendering of Release notes - this is broken in CentOS 5 release, as they aren't shown as utf-8.
• Make a "testing guide" that describes what needs to be tested at the very least.
  • Test cases for specific hardware types and usage scenarios need to be created
  • Checklists of what is acceptable/not-acceptable in a package
• Have a far more focused QA team. Some ideas:
  • Only have people on the team who actively test releases.
  • Have a list of hardware and facilities that each team member has, so that developers can ping individual QA team members to test specific things (e.g. arch-specific testing).
  • Have a QA roadmap with clear deadlines.
• Have a 'less focused' testers team.
  • People who use CentOS in the field
  • A timeline for when items go to testers and what is expected from them.
• Make a "testing cluster"
  • a virtualized enviroment that can automatically install new builds with various different configurations to test if the basic stuff works/fails (e.g. to quickly find Anaconda bugs).
  • a default 'build' for individual package testing (useful for updates).
• More posts by the developers to the Centos-QA list when new things become available for testing
  • More knowledge of what is being looked at in a per week schedule, like
    • this weeks focus is anaconda release notes, and partitioning and upgrades
    • this weeks focus is anaconda's repositories and cleanup of xyz issue
    • will be rebuilding all packages to confirm build-system, confirm packages work.
• Cleaner Timeframes
  • Development timeframe, with listed required feature set.
  • Documentation timeframe, with listed required feature set.
  • Testers timeframe
  • QA comes at the end of each timeframe to ensure that things are completed.
  • This is all hard because we are all volunteers but having at least an idea for what is being done, and when it is considered completed would help.