Proposed project: Testing

zem · 2006-03-01 00:00:26

Is anyone interested in an organized testing effort? If so, I’ll create a new Testing forum.

Draft intro:

This forum is for experienced users who would like to help test current and future versions of Textpattern. It’s not for discussing
general problems encountered “in the wild” with live Textpattern sites – that’s what the Troubleshooting forum is for.

Suggested topics include:

Test reports (likely bugs encountered during testing) and confirmations
Useful data for testing (example articles, templates, forms, database snapshots and so on)
Discussing testing methods, resources, and problems
Discussing new Textpattern revisions, from a “how do we test this?” point of view

For now, we’re concerned only with Textpattern’s 4.0.x branch. Crockery (4.1) is still experimental and includes many things that are likely to change.

If you’d like to help test Textpattern, here’s a quick how-to:

1. Use Subversion to fetch the current 4.0.x development version from http://svn.textpattern.com/development/4.0/.

2. Install this fresh copy in a “sandbox” – a separate subdomain or subdirectory, or on your local machine, with it’s own database. To avoid accidents, we strongly recommend against sharing a database with a live Textpattern site.

3. (Optional but recommended) Immediately after installation, capture a snapshot of the database. This will make it very easy to restore your test sandbox to its original state without having to re-install Textpattern. You can do this with phpMyAdmin using the “Export” function, or with the following command line:

mysqldump -c -u mydbusername -p mydbname > snapshot.sql

To restore the snapshot at any point, use phpMyAdmin’s ‘SQL’ tab and upload your snapshot file, or the following command line:

mysql -u mydbusername -p mydbname < snapshot.sql

4. Test. Look for problems and think up tricky situations. Watch the timeline for new features and bug fixes, and test those. Make sure new changes don’t break old features.

By sharing ideas on the Testing forum, we can gradually build a collection of standard test data: article bodies, snippets of template and form code, and snapshots of the correct output produced by those things.

You can help the bug fixing effort by testing unconfirmed reports from the Bug Reports forum. Often these bug reports don’t include all the
necessary information. If you can find a way to reproduce the bug in your default sandbox, you’ve confirmed the bug.

5. Post any problems you find on the Testing forum so that others can help confirm it. Ideally, we need to know the steps required to
reproduce the problem on a default installation; the actual output (i.e. the buggy results); and the expected output (what should happen, if the bug wasn’t there).

We’ll move confirmed reports to the Bug Reports forum as required. (In some cases, that might not be necessary: a clear, confirmed test report makes it very easy to fix bugs)

6. Keep up to date with new revisions, and keep testing.

If you happen to know PHP, feel free to try your hand at debugging the problems posted on the Testing forum.

hcgtv · 2006-03-01 00:56:50

Alex,

I get a timeout trying to grab SVN, don’t know what the problem is.

I found a stand alone client call RapidSVN. I grabbed PunBB’s SVN off of Textdrive, so I know the client and the repositories are working.

zem · 2006-03-01 01:03:21

Looks like a server problem. I’ve raised a ticket.

hcgtv · 2006-03-01 03:20:14

OK, SVN looks to be working now.

This is a comparison report against 4.0.3:

<pre><code>Mode: Just Mismatches
Filters: -*.svn\
Left base folder: E:\Source\distros\textpattern\textpattern-4.0.3
Right base folder: E:\Source\svn\textpattern
Name Size Name Size
———————————————————————————————
textpattern 809,575 textpattern 1,677,865
+include 233,018 +include 479,804 |+txp_diag.php 9,927 <> |+txp_diag.php 9,937 |\txp_image.php 10,843 <> |\txp_image.php 11,538
+lib 176,338 +lib 362,604 |+classTextile.php 32,662 <> |+classTextile.php 32,718 |+txplib_db.php 11,054 <> |+txplib_db.php 11,423 |+txplib_misc.php 40,191 <> |+txplib_misc.php 41,707 |\txplib_update.php 6,399 <> |\txplib_update.php 6,490
+publish 90,818 +publish 184,693 |+comment.php 15,943 <> |+comment.php 15,964 |\taghandlers.php 55,326 <> |\taghandlers.php 55,332
+setup 153,083 +setup 314,622 |\setup-langs.php 67,771 <> |\setup-langs.php 70,811
\publish.php 31,467 <> \publish.php 31,501
HISTORY.txt 6,788 <> HISTORY.txt 6,914
———————————————————————————————</code></pre>

Checked Trac and it seems to be right, so I’m ready to start testing.

squaredeye · 2006-03-03 13:59:02

HCGTV,
I am using rapid SVN too. Can you give me an insight into what I do once I have grabbed the latest 4.0 and crockery? I will be running them locally. Are there any security concerns? Do I need to be running them on a totally seperate local server (in case it crashes?) (not that I know how to do that).

Where do I look for what has changed in the updates/changes?

What’s the value of your post above? What is a comparison report?

DO all these questions suggest that I shouldn’t be doing this? Or is this a good place to start learning?

:) Thx, Matthew

mrdale · 2006-03-03 16:23:38

Don’t know if I’ve been rash, reckless or stupid.

But I’ve been updating all my installations of TXP out of the development branch quite regularly and have not generally had a problem relating to the bleeding edge. I’ve never had to roll back an revision either.

So, how should I help? I’ve got quite a few installs that are the latest build.

hcgtv · 2006-03-03 17:30:39

Matthew,

I finally got TortoiseSVN working, so I’m using that.

I’m running the test version on my Windows XP laptop, which isn’t open to the world. What I do is create a seperate MySQL database and install the version I want to test to a seperate directory off the root. This is what I do for all the apps I’m testing at the moment, there are no concerns for security or crashes since it’s my own local server.

For changes, check the SVN logs for what has changed, also you can look at the timeline on Trac at the dev.textpattern.com site.

The comparision report just brought me up to speed as to what core files were changed from 4.0.3 in the development branch.

Questions are good, that’s the only way to learn.

Textpattern CMS

Textpattern CMS support forum

#1 2006-03-01 00:00:26

Proposed project: Testing

#2 2006-03-01 00:56:50

Re: Proposed project: Testing

#3 2006-03-01 01:03:21

Re: Proposed project: Testing

#4 2006-03-01 03:20:14

Re: Proposed project: Testing

#5 2006-03-03 13:59:02

Re: Proposed project: Testing

#6 2006-03-03 16:23:38

Re: Proposed project: Testing

#7 2006-03-03 17:30:39

Re: Proposed project: Testing

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