Derek Wright wrote:
overall, i'm excited about this work, and think it'll be very cool (both for drupal.org, and for other sites i'm working on to manage software development)...
On Jun 15, 2006, at 4:52 PM, Rok Žlender wrote:
1. Testing server queries project server for all untested patches. This will require a xml-rpc handler in project module which would generate a list of untested patches or patches marked "patch (needs automated test)" and return it as a response.
given how issues and patches are currently handled, this is a very ambiguous query to attempt to fulfill:
a) patches are just files attached to issue comments. there's no enforcement of a given naming convention, etc. it's therefore hard to separate patches worth testing from screenshots and other random attachments of all sorts.
b) it's entire issues that are set to a given status, not individual comments. a given issue might have 10+ comments with different patches attached to them, some of which have been reviewed and already vetoed, etc.
c) the *last* patch in a given issue isn't always the one people care about. sometimes a patch from early in the thread ends up being the best way to solve something, even if other patches are attached in later comments that attempt other approaches.
because of all of this, even marking an issue "patch (needs auto-tests)" doesn't really help much. that'll make it easier to find all the issues that need testing, but not the individual patches.
similarly, all this makes the reporting hard, too. when the testing server comes back to post a followup saying "patch foo.txt results: FAILED", that might be comment #45 in a long issue, but foo.txt might be from early in the the thread. it'd be nice to be able to group them more directly. instead of a new follow-up, *maybe* we want to edit the existing comment and add this additional info (though that won't show up as an update in the tracker, etc). i dunno, it's a sticky problem.
i haven't thought about all of this long enough to have a proposal for how it should all work. but, i wanted to at least share my concerns so others who have a chance can keep this stuff in mind when thinking about this.
some brainstorming...
1) project should use threaded comments, not it's own chronological followups? it'd help to group replies to specific comments more nicely, but it also might be harder to follow.
Casetracker has threaded comments. There is ongoing disscussion on whether this is a good idea. Cheers, Gerhard