Mailing List Archive: Perl: porters

How can people test the release candidates?

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andy at petdance

Nov 26, 2007, 4:50 PM

Post #1 of 6 (105 views)
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How can people test the release candidates?

http://perlbuzz.com/2007/11/one-step-closer-perl-5100-rc2-is-out.html

Jason Porritt said:

It would be nice to have more information on how to help with the
testing.

Example: A few tests (IPC and op/groups) failed on my OS X 10.4.11
installation -- what now? Do I enter a bug report somewhere or just
send the info to one of the mailing lists?

Brief notices like this one are great, but it needs to funnel users to
more direct actions. A link to downloading Perl 5.10 is a good start,
but what do I do when I have a problem? What is the process? A Google
search doesn't turn up much, and there's not much info on dev.perl.org
about getting involved in development or testing (other than the
mailing list, of course).

---

Note that I'm not looking for answers myself. I'm handing this back
as feedback from a potential tester. Perhaps the next announcement
could include a "How you can help" statement.

xoa

--
Andy Lester => andy [at] petdance => www.petdance.com => AIM:petdance

andy at hexten

Nov 26, 2007, 4:54 PM

Post #2 of 6 (102 views)
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Re: How can people test the release candidates? [In reply to]

On 27 Nov 2007, at 00:50, Andy Lester wrote:
> Example: A few tests (IPC and op/groups) failed on my OS X 10.4.11
> installation -- what now? Do I enter a bug report somewhere or just
> send the info to one of the mailing lists?
>
> Brief notices like this one are great, but it needs to funnel users
> to more direct actions. A link to downloading Perl 5.10 is a good
> start, but what do I do when I have a problem? What is the process?
> A Google search doesn't turn up much, and there's not much info on
> dev.perl.org about getting involved in development or testing (other
> than the mailing list, of course).

It'd be nice if (at least for blead) it could report failures
automatically. If you're building blead you've probably got another
Perl installed already - so you could install Perl::Build::Reporter
on /that/ Perl and have an option in Configure to use it during the
blead build.

--
Andy Armstrong, Hexten

nick at ccl4

Nov 27, 2007, 12:36 AM

Post #3 of 6 (100 views)
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Re: How can people test the release candidates? [In reply to]

On Mon, Nov 26, 2007 at 06:50:06PM -0600, Andy Lester wrote:

> Note that I'm not looking for answers myself. I'm handing this back
> as feedback from a potential tester. Perhaps the next announcement
> could include a "How you can help" statement.

I ended up phrasing it like this:

Please report any problems you encounter, especially bugs introduced
since 5.8.7. Whenever possible, please report bugs using the perlbug
utility. If the build or regression tests fail, make nok. If the build
fails to early to run this, please mail perlbug at perl.org directly.

eg http://use.perl.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/21/1733227

I hope that that is sufficient.

Oooh. Grammar mistake. Oops. ('to' shold be 'too')

Nicholas Clark

rgarciasuarez at gmail

Nov 27, 2007, 3:42 AM

Post #4 of 6 (96 views)
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Re: How can people test the release candidates? [In reply to]

On 27/11/2007, Andy Lester <andy [at] petdance> wrote:
> http://perlbuzz.com/2007/11/one-step-closer-perl-5100-rc2-is-out.html
>
> Jason Porritt said:
>
> It would be nice to have more information on how to help with the
> testing.
>
> Example: A few tests (IPC and op/groups) failed on my OS X 10.4.11
> installation -- what now? Do I enter a bug report somewhere or just
> send the info to one of the mailing lists?
>
> Brief notices like this one are great, but it needs to funnel users to
> more direct actions. A link to downloading Perl 5.10 is a good start,
> but what do I do when I have a problem? What is the process? A Google
> search doesn't turn up much, and there's not much info on dev.perl.org
> about getting involved in development or testing (other than the
> mailing list, of course).

Right. Of course, everything is explained in the friendly INSTALL
document, so in the announcement, linking to it might be enough
(there's a pretty version on search.cpan.org).

But I'm kidding -- INSTALL is not that friendly. I worked quite a bit
on it those last months, to trim old information, reorganize stuff,
put important stuff right at the front (like, the 3 commands you need
to type to get perl compiled with the defaults). Feedback would be
appreciated. :)

doughera at lafayette

Nov 27, 2007, 5:40 AM

Post #5 of 6 (96 views)
Permalink

Re: How can people test the release candidates? [In reply to]

On Tue, 27 Nov 2007, Rafael Garcia-Suarez wrote:

> > Brief notices like this one are great, but it needs to funnel users to
> > more direct actions. A link to downloading Perl 5.10 is a good start,
> > but what do I do when I have a problem? What is the process? A Google
> > search doesn't turn up much, and there's not much info on dev.perl.org
> > about getting involved in development or testing (other than the
> > mailing list, of course).
>
> Right. Of course, everything is explained in the friendly INSTALL
> document, so in the announcement, linking to it might be enough
> (there's a pretty version on search.cpan.org).

And there really is a link in the very first section (lines 41 and 42)
that says:

If you have problems, corrections, or questions, please see
L<"Reporting Problems"> below.

I don't know how to make it any clearer. If someone will search Google
but not the INSTALL document, I don't know what we can do.

> But I'm kidding -- INSTALL is not that friendly. I worked quite a bit
> on it those last months, to trim old information, reorganize stuff,
> put important stuff right at the front (like, the 3 commands you need
> to type to get perl compiled with the defaults).

Everything that is in INSTALL is there because someone thought it
important. Everything that has been inserted near the top over the
years was put there because someone thought it more important than all
the other stuff already there -- and usually with good reason. The end
result, as you have observed, was not terribly coherent.

Just for a sense of perspective, I looked back at the original
version (perl5.001n). Here's its entire SYNOPSIS section:

=head1 NAME

Install - Build and Installation guide for perl5.

=head1 SYNOPSIS

The basic steps to build and install perl5 are:

rm -f config.sh
sh Configure
make
make test
make install

Each of these is explained in further detail below.

> Feedback would be appreciated. :)

Is "thank you" sufficient feedback?

--
Andy Dougherty doughera [at] lafayette

andy at petdance

Nov 27, 2007, 7:24 AM

Post #6 of 6 (98 views)
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Re: How can people test the release candidates? [In reply to]

> I don't know how to make it any clearer. If someone will search
> Google
> but not the INSTALL document, I don't know what we can do.

You're a 20% programmer, thinking about 20% programmers. Why not try
to pull in the 80%ers? See http://perlbuzz.com/mechanix/2007/11/80-programmers.html
for what I mean by a 20% programmer.

If you want help from as wide a base as possible, it'll help to lower
the barrier to entry. To you, that might be a very low barrier, but
to someone who may just be getting his/her feet wet, some gentle hand-
holding may go a long way. A simple paragraph or two and some
pointers to the instructions in the announcements may make a huge
difference.

--
Andy Lester => andy [at] petdance => www.petdance.com => AIM:petdance

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