Is it time to start regression testing yet?

[Ian Eiloart]

--On 6 June 2009 12:43:36 -0700 "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh at apple.com> wrote:

>  and if there are no users of a port to report errors, then who really
> cares if it's broken?

All the users who come to MacPorts, give it a go, then go away without 
reporting the errors that cause them to give up. It's probably better to be 
missing a port than to have potential users wasting time with a broken port.

Why don't they report the problems? Well, perhaps because they need to 
install the software today, they've wasted time already, they need to move 
on. Or perhaps they don't understand, or even know about the reporting 
process. Or perhaps they think they have nothing useful to say; they don't 
know why the port failed, and assume someone else must already be onto it. 
There's no easy way to tell whether the problem has already been reported.

So, and automated test suite would (a) get errors diagnosed and fixed 
quicker, (b) reduce the number of errors as a result, and (c) give us a way 
of flagging them before a user starts a 20 minute build process.


-- 
Ian Eiloart
IT Services, University of Sussex
01273-873148 x3148
For new support requests, see http://www.sussex.ac.uk/its/help/