testing updates (was Re: Dell Mini 9 update testing)

[Steve Beattie]

Hi Craig,

On Wed, Nov 12, 2008 at 10:07:54AM -0700, Craig A. Eddy wrote:
>     I am in possession of a Dell Mini 9.  I am not a member of QA.  I am 
> not a programmer.  I would be interested in finding out what I can do to 
> help.  My use of the Mini is primarily to show people what Ubuntu is, 
> and what it is capable of.

I'm not Chris and can't speak specifically for how the Dell mini 9
updates process will be handled, but I would expect that it would not
be terribly different from the way Stable Release Updates (SRUs) are
handled in general.

To be explicit, to test proposed updates does not require programming
expertise; what's more useful is to be a slightly more experienced user
and an attention to detail. Basically, the process for testing specific
fixes is:

	1) reproduce original problem
	2) install the proposed update
	3) attempt to reproduce problem again
	4) look for possible regressions
	5) report results

We do ask that testers be slightly more experienced than a basic user
both to help recognize regressions and as there is some small risk that
an update may cause problems that may not be straightforward to revert;
ideally, fixes that have made it to the -proposed repository have been
vetted enough to not do that.  A tester should also be comfortable
enabling and disabling package repositories; experience with a command
line could be helpful but is not required at all.

I gave an open week presentation walking through how I did a specific
verification, the log of which is at

  https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MeetingLogs/openweekintrepid/VerifySRU

I used some apt commands directly, but there was nothing I did there
that required being a programmer or couldn't have been done through the
gui tools (synaptic in particular).

>     I am, however, one of the editors of the UWN, and your reply may be 
> used in the next issue.

By all means. Thanks for the interest and the work you do on UWN!

-- 
Steve Beattie
<sbeattie at ubuntu.com>
http://NxNW.org/~steve/
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