Aryeh Gregor wrote:
On Wed, Mar 10, 2010 at 5:10 PM, Roan Kattouw roan.kattouw@gmail.com wrote:
We're initially setting up Selenium for use by the usability initiative, with the idea of extending it to the rest of the software when we have time/resources for that. You're right that this should probably have been communicated earlier, but until a few weeks ago the status was "Ryan's patiently waiting for the Selenium servers to arrive and get set up".
Okay, but it seems like several employees (including you) already knew this, and several volunteers (including me) did not. This implies that there's some communications channel that employees are reading, but not volunteers. Is it some public place that we just don't visit? If so, where? Or do you have internal face-to-face meetings, private mailing lists, something like that? Assuming Wikimedia intends to maintain a bazaar development model, it's quite important that interested volunteers can be on the same page as employees.
I made an announcement about interaction testing automation back in October and received some feedback from some of you. http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2009-October/045801.html
One of the suggestions was to start small and expand the scope later. I thought it was a brilliant and a practical idea. The system is designed to offload manual testing for basic interaction regression tests and put the focus for manual testing on to new features and things visual confirmations are needed. We have one system up for OS X and another system is in the process of being built. We are still experimenting how the whole system works with less manual intervention. Integrating code review process, extension validation, and central reporting and publishing, and etc will be nice enhancements to add on as we prove this automation system work in a small work group and mature the system with the process as a whole.
The intention is to expand this automation to wider developer community and hopefully creating test cases will be part of the development process. :-)
Cheers,
- Naoko