Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 15:13:52 -0400 (AST)
From: "Marc G. Fournier" <scrappy@postgresql.org>
To: Andrew Dunstan <andrew@dunslane.net>
Cc: Postgresql Hackers <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: [pgsql-www] Release cycle length
In-Reply-To: <3FBA6999.9030906@dunslane.net>
Message-ID: <20031118151211.U731@ganymede.hub.org>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0311180329330.639-100000@peter.localdomain>
	<87smkmgyn7.fsf@mailbox.samurai.com>
	<20031117233828.Y731@ganymede.hub.org>
	<200311180942.31093.josh@agliodbs.com> <3FBA6999.9030906@dunslane.net>
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On Tue, 18 Nov 2003, Andrew Dunstan wrote:

> Josh Berkus wrote:
>
> >Guys,
> >
> >I agree with Neil ... it's not the length of the development part of the
> >cycle, it's the length of the beta testing.
> >
> >I do think an online bug tracker (bugzilla or whatever) would help.   I also
> >think that having a person in charge of "testing" would help as well ... no
> >biggie, just someone whose duty it is to e-mail people in the community and
> >ask about the results of testing, especially on the more obscure ports.  I
> >think a few e-mail reminders would do a *lot* to speed things up.  But I'm
> >not volunteering for this job; managing the release PR is "herding cats"
> >enough!
> >
>
> Maybe some sort of automated distributed build farm would be a good
> idea. Check out http://build.samba.org/about.html to see how samba does
> it (much lighter than the Mozilla tinderbox approach).
>
> We wouldn't need to be as intensive as they appear to be - maybe a once
> or twice a day download and test run would do the trick, but it could
> pick up lots of breakage fairly quickly.
>
> That is not to say that more intensive testing isn't also needed on
> occasion.

Check the archives on this, as its been hashed out already once at least
... I think the big issue/problem is that nobody seems able (or wants) to
come up with a script that could be setup in cron on machines to do this
... something simple that would dump the output to a log file and, if
regression tests failed, email'd the machine owner that it needs to be
checked would do, I would think ...