Stability Release (1 Viewer)

[wierdnatox]

I think we need to come up with a way for testers to post bugs for consideration before they get logged. I have tried reporting bugs in the forums and get no response so I don't know whether the post is being looked at, ignored or just not read.

Also, other developers need to be able to see what has been entered so as not to duplicate entries. They should have the option to add more information to the post, but it should not turn into a free for all like the forums generally seem to do.

A better method of communication should be established between developers and certified testers. It is not always possible to meet on IRC and even if it is it may not be a good time to test things out there and then. (Wives and children getting in the way again )

If any or all of the above is already available then the problem is with communication. I would love to help with testing but the developers need to identify how they want the testing to be done, it is your project after all.

Finally, in the same way MP is being developed in peoples spare time it should be remembered that that is how it will be tested. You are not going to get a team of regimented tester reporting bugs in a consistent manner 24/7 using a rigorous test plan, but if you define the process by which you want us to do things it should at least be a step in the right direction.

Just my opinion, hope it helps

 

[Smirnuff]

I'd love to. All I really know about Media Portal is based on my own experience.

This is enough to be of benefit to us all, say for instance that your primary use of MP is to read blogs and news from the comfort of your arm chair during the ads, come up with a simple test plan, or a complicated 3 week in the making test plan, whichever you prefer or feel is appropriate that fully tests the My News plugin, have a bunch of mediaportal.xml configs pre-built with good blogs, blogs who send out poorly formed XML, non-existant RSS feeds and so on, when a new pre-release becomes available run through all those sites and see how MP reacts and report your negative findings, along with the steps performed and needed to reproduce. If a handful of people were to take this approach then we'd be onto a good thing for sure.

Share any test plans you might have with the community, as a developer I will, albeit begrudgingly and mostly sounding like Mutley from Wacky Races, run through a test plan after making changes to a portion of the code and prior to committing the changes to CVS.

Would it be fair to say that on the developer's machines, myTV works perfectly, switches channels quickly, records and timeshifts without maxing out the CPU?

Yes that would be a fair and accurate assumption for the most part. This week for instance two particular bugs that I am responsible for fixing cannot be reproduced on the machines I use for MP development & testing, making the fixing of them dependant upon me understanding what is causing the issue which isn't so easy without good help from the community, one of them still remains actually .

You need a small group with realistic expectations and goals

I would really like to see such a group formed and think it would be of great benefit to the application...

 

[elliottmc]

Would it be fair to say that on the developer's machines, myTV works perfectly, switches channels quickly, records and timeshifts without maxing out the CPU?

Yes that would be a fair and accurate assumption for the most part. This week for instance two particular bugs that I am responsible for fixing cannot be reproduced on the machines I use for MP development & testing, making the fixing of them dependant upon me understanding what is causing the issue which isn't so easy without good help from the community, one of them still remains actually .

You need a small group with realistic expectations and goals

I would really like to see such a group formed and think it would be of great benefit to the application...

I'll see what I can do personally.

By the way, which part of Wales are you in? I'm in Cardiff.

 

[pshdo]

Hi there.....

This is enough to be of benefit to us all, say for instance that your primary use of MP is to read blogs and news from the comfort of your arm chair during the ads, come up with a simple test plan, or a complicated 3 week in the making test plan, whichever you prefer or feel is appropriate that fully tests the My News plugin, have a bunch of mediaportal.xml configs pre-built with good blogs, blogs who send out poorly formed XML, non-existant RSS feeds and so on, when a new pre-release becomes available run through all those sites and see how MP reacts and report your negative findings, along with the steps performed and needed to reproduce. If a handful of people were to take this approach then we'd be onto a good thing for sure.

I for one would love to help, but i don´t quite understand what testplan you are thinking off.....
Can someone try to make a template for a testplan or something like that, so i, and perhaps some other in the forum can see what we are really talking about here....

If i should "make up a testplan" for my self, it perhaps wouldn´t be something that was to any use anyway, and therefore a complete waist of both mine and the teams time..... (if i eg. would sign up to test a plugin that is flawles, or a plugin that perhaps 200 other people also are testing, eg. changing from tv to radio and back to tv 5 times in a row and see what happens.... or something else.....)

I´d really would like some more information about testing, eg. how mutch time will it take for me to do the test, what kind of testers are you missing right now, what test do you need to be done, and so on......

Perhaps one of the team-leaders could take a little time and put some info together on a site, and i will be glad to sign up to test something.....
- i prefer to test something of interrest to me ofcource... :wink:

:arrow: And yes, i have seen the info from Frodo about the search for testers, but sorry to say that i didn´t feel that it gave me the info i needed to sign up at that time, so i didn´t......

 

[moltas]

I have a dedicated PC for mediaportal which is already a testing machine, so I would be more than glad to help. Like pshdo I am not really sure what to do but if someone could help me initially I could give a go.

I am also trying to persuade my brother to join as a programmer How much time is expected per day?

/Moltas

 

[robomonkey]

I would really like to see such a group formed and think it would be of great benefit to the application...

I'd be interested in doing this, I'd like to say that I'm experienced enough to lead such such a team and prepare testplans but unfortunately i'm not.

I used to be a 'bug hunter' on eve-online, and what they'd do was say 'ok we've released a set of modules, can all BH's use them relentlssley in every possible senario and report any problem'.

I can see that approach working here, say for plugins, you could say we're going to overhaul MyTV section by section, first will be the EPG and channnel changing, can the BH's hammer that section for two weeks and fill in a pre-defined report form for any errors.

I don't know whether that would work, but I'd quite like to be a bug hunter again, but like a few people have posted I don't know how to help.

My suggestion tho, is to recruit an elite team of core testers, give them a title like BH_robomonkey and a dedicated forum channel, where you devs can post requests for the testers to hit and also for testers to tell the rest of the BH team where they found problems so they can try to re-create them.

robo

 

[tomtom21000]

Example for a test plan

http://www.maisenbachers.de/dokuw/testing:plugins:msnmessenger?s=test+plan

MrMitchel did this. I hope it does not scare you off. I don´t know if he is still going through his testplan on every release.
I don´t know if it is necessary for every release, since the msnmanger-plugin hasn´t been worked on for some time. But then, thinks may break at a place where you wouldn´t expect it to do so.

So I agree, that for willing testers there should be a more precise statement about the "how to".

And the whole forum consists of testers, with all sorts of systems, and level of skills. But a reliable set of testers to sort things out on irc or to test before a release would surely be a good addition.

And from your original call for testers, there was a tremendous feedback. Within days there were about a hundred support statements. I don´t know how this was handled behind the scenes (irc/pm), so I can´t comment on this, the public feedback on the forums from the devs wasn´t big.

My personal point of view: I am more of the feature hunting fraction

I think with MP we are in an nearly ideal world:
You can stay on a rather stable version (like I do now most of the times)
or you can install a new cvs version three times a day, if you are curious for new features or wait for a specific bug to be solved.

And believe me there is room for features and bug fixing.
The fastest reaction time for a feature request I experienced was 90 minutes. Posted at 7:30 a.m., weather images were available at 9:00 a.m.

And where do you find a project where the developers allmost always take their time to help out on irc. I have seen bugs fixed on the irc-chat within 10 minutes unnumerous times.

Yes I also see the need of stability and the need for ease of use plus the easy setup. Everything is being worked on. But imagine: According to sourceforge statistics, MP has been downloaded over 12,000 times alone in the last 7 days. Most of these people are not here on the forums and they do not have the slightest idea about the difference between overlay and vmr9 renderless and they don´t care.
They are more digital:
works - works not
like - like not
work out of the box, wizzards, standard - expert settings, flexibility + templates
will help to make mp ready for the masses.
Win some distribution partners ( with hardware that definitely works with mp) already started, but also needs manpower.
Do some serious press work ( another vacant job )

This will attract developers, too.

Last thing for today: Rethink the distribution policy. Decide which modules are core features for a htpc.
Implement a plugin download and install routine. Ideal from within mp, with a short description of the plugin, screenshot etc. Think about a system to reserve string-ids for external plugins in the strings.xml or let them have there own strings files.

Some late thoughts. Third evening I am up until 2:00 a.m. Got to go to bed earlier

tomtom

 

[moltas]

Ok, lets try some testing then. Is there any specific areas that needs extra testing or should I pick something, myself?

/Moltas

 

[robomonkey]

http://www.maisenbachers.de/dokuw/testing:plugins:msnmessenger?s=test+plan

MrMitchel did this. I hope it does not scare you off.

This doesn't phase me, in fact it looks very usable, I could easily run through something like that.

I'll tell you what why don't you post a test plan for whatever you're coding at the minute, then ask everyone interested to run through it, following that you can pick your elite team from the responses you get

 

[jewfish]

Would it be fair to say that on the developer's machines, myTV works perfectly, switches channels quickly, records and timeshifts without maxing out the CPU?

Yes that would be a fair and accurate assumption for the most part. This week for instance two particular bugs that I am responsible for fixing cannot be reproduced on the machines I use for MP development & testing, making the fixing of them dependant upon me understanding what is causing the issue which isn't so easy without good help from the community, one of them still remains actually .

Is it possible for people in other countries (for example australia) to provide captures of the DVB-T streams to assist in debugging the TV module ?

Rob