Re: [gnome-love] wanted: php or cgi programmer with some spare time to help with gnome test spec

[Luis Villa <louie ximian com>]

On Sun, 2001-12-02 at 12:03, fflewddur wrote:
> i started to take a look at the cvs code, and it doesn't look too bad. 
> from what i understand, you just want a a nicer interface that basically
> present s 'table of contents' to a given set of subdirectories,
> correct?  it would need to be dynamically generated from the current
> state of file system, so no scripts or other annoyances would be
> necessary.  right now i'm working on the assumption that any subdir in
> the gnome_test_specs dir would need to be indexed except for the
> 'scripts' directory.  unless i'm way off base here, i'll try and have
> something up for testing in a day or two :)

Pretty much on target. CVS doesn't need to be indexed either :) Keep in
mind that flexibility is nice- right now we're using the old reporting
script and the old HTML files, but a design that makes it (reasonably)
easy to rip those out and use (for example) XML to store data and (in
the very long term) a DB to store reports would be a big plus.
Luis(using too many parentheses)

todd
> On Sun, 2001-12-02 at 00:00, Luis Villa wrote:
> > Mario, Todd, Thiago, anyone else interested: 
> > It shouldn't be much work; basically three or four php pages. Perl is
> > definitely optional, but might be useful. 
> >
> > To be more clear on what's wanted:
> > http://primates.ximian.com/~louie/gnome_test_specs/evolution/
> > http://primates.ximian.com/~louie/gnome_test_specs/evolution/mail/mail_gen/
> >
> > is what the current interface looks like. As you can see, there is a big
> > hierarchy there- dozens of subdirs and hundreds of tests in evolution
> > alone, nearly 2000 tests in all.
> >
> > Currently, all those pages are static html generated partially by
> > scripts (all the indexes) and partially by hand (all the actual tests.)
> > This makes updating and maintaining things a royal pain. 
> >
> > So... given that we can't rewrite the top level data files (which are
> > all of this format):
> > http://primates.ximian.com/~louie/gnome_test_specs/evolution/mail/mail_gen/func_mail01.html
> >
> > what I'm hoping one of you can come up with is a new interface that
> > (1) uses the old data files and the current reporting script.
> >  
> > (2) is dynamically created, so that if someone just adds a new test
> > file, new test directory, or new test component the new addition just
> > 'shows up' without having to run multiple scripts. This'll make it
> > easier for gnome QA volunteers and/or module maintainers to write and
> > create their own tests.
> >
> > (3) avoids the use of popups to display crucial information, so that
> > using the interface itself will be less painful. Right now, having to
> > open and close a new window for each individual test makes large scale
> > testing a PITA. 
> >
> > I mentioned perl because the 'ideal' solution would
> > (1) re-parse all of the HTML test files (like func_mail01 above) into a
> > more sane format like text or XML (which would probably best be done in
> > perl.) 
> > (2) re-write the ksh reporting functions in perl, or maybe php, to make
> > it more portable, extensible, etc.
> >
> > but these can be done independently of the front-end work, so if no perl
> > volunteers are stepping forward right now that's fine.
> >
> > Anyway, I hope that makes my goals for the update/rewrite a bit more
> > clear- I really think that having a better test infrastructure is
> > crucial to making gnome more mature, and having a better web front end
> > to the tests Sun has given us will be a big step towards that. So,
> > thanks!
> > Luis
> >
> > P.S. If this is still unclear, of course, I'm totally open to sharing
> > more ideas and more of my experience with the test suite. 
> > P.P.S. In case some of you are not familiar with CVS, I've put a tarball
> > of the current test_specs at
> > http://primates.ximian.com/~louie/gnome_test_specs.tgz
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On Sat, 2001-12-01 at 22:46, fflewddur wrote:
> > > well, i don't have much perl experience, and i've never messed with cgi
> > > at all, but i do know a fair amount about php.  what exactly would be
> > > involved, and do you have any ideas on how to get started?  i've been
> > > looking for a way to help out the gnome2 effort, so if no one better
> > > qualified feels like doing this, i'd be glad to give it a try.
> > >
> > > todd
> > >
> > > On Sat, 2001-12-01 at 15:19, Luis Villa wrote:
> > > > So... in gnome cvs* there is a wonderful test spec suite written by Sun,
> > > > designed to allow the gnome community to easily and reproducibly test
> > > > gnome components. 
> > > >
> > > > The problem is that the spec was written by very good QA people who
> > > > aren't exactly web experts- all pages are static and generated with awk
> > > > and shell, and the cgis are in ksh. This makes it much more difficult to
> > > > expand and maintain the test spec than it could/should be.
> > > >
> > > > So... I'm calling for someone (or a group of someones) with some perl
> > > > CGI and/or php experience to rewrite the html portion of the spec to
> > > > make it more maintainable and usable. This could conceivably involve
> > > > writing as few as _three_ pages, depending on how you want to do it, so
> > > > for someone with a fair amount of experience this could be a really
> > > > quick project.
> > > >
> > > > If anyone has any questions and/or thoughts and/or time to volunteer
> > > > please drop me a note and I'll be happy to help explain the test spec
> > > > system and where a good rewrite might start.
> > > >
> > > > Thanks-
> > > > Luis Villa
> > > > Ximian Bugmaster
> > > >
> > > > *gnome_test_spec module
> > > >
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