Get Involved/Quality
In the early 2000's there was a specific team at KDE which was focused on finding loose ends in KDE applications and tying them together. This was a task of user case studies, writing articles, documentation, creating missing artwork for consistency, and other miscellanea. Ultimately, this team contributed patches of code and documentation that really rounded out the KDE experience.
Early 2012 this team was revived and now has a mailing list as well as a channel called #kde-quality on irc.freenode.net.
There are many different domains a Quality team should cover (see a complete list here: *http://techbase.kde.org/Contribute/Quality_Team), but as a newly starting team we decided to focus our work on testing, mainly also because of the reduced manpower we started with.
Testing
What exactly does testing mean?
Testing is part of the overall Quality Assurance of software. More information about the exact definition can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_quality_assurance and here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_testing
A very interesting read is this: http://www.thebraidytester.com/downloads/YouAreNotDoneYet.pdf
Please also have a look at the Tutorial on how to become a KDE Tester
Initial steps
Since this is a new start we need to define the exact goal of this team. There is a Brainstorming page where ideas are gathered.
Wiki work
The basics is of course to establish a useful wiki resource. We currently use https://trello.com/kdetesting to avoid duplicate work. Please ping Anne-Marie (annma) or Myriam (Mamarok) in #kde-quality on irc.freenode.net to be added to the group.
Trunk testing
Trunk testing can be done with Project Neon: http://techbase.kde.org/Getting_Started/Using_Project_Neon_to_contribute_to_KDE
Beta testing
Please see the Beta subpage for more information.
Existing testing infrastructure
Continuous Integration (Jenkins)
KDE already runs a build server with Jenkins: http://build.kde.org/ Please ask the KDE sysadmins if you would like to use it for your project. Who gets the results? Who fixes them? This tool needs to be really used.
Unit tests
Tutorial for unit tests in KDE: http://techbase.kde.org/Development/Tutorials/Unittests
Code (syntax) tests
A static code analyzing tool is provided by the EnglishBreakfastNetwork.
Another static code analyzer is cppcheck which can be integrated with Jenkins.
More information can also be found here: http://techbase.kde.org/Development/Tutorials/Code_Checking
Coverity Prevent is another tool, not Open Source but we can get the results from it.
Debugging
KDE already has an extensive wiki for debugging: http://techbase.kde.org/Development/Tutorials/Debugging
Existing testing tools
An non-exhaustive and maybe not up-to-date list of testing tools can be found here: http://www.opensourcetesting.org/ See also http://techbase.kde.org/Development/Tools#Quality_Assurance
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| QtTest | Qt provides a testing module that can be used for unit testing: http://qt-project.org/doc/qt-4.8/qttest.html There also is a possibility to do basic UI testing. |
| Valgrind | A tool to analyze memory leaks: http://techbase.kde.org/Development/Tools/Valgrind All apps should be ran through Valgrind on a regular basis, part of the Quality Assurance. |
| Piglit | A tool to test OpenGL drivers: http://people.freedesktop.org/~nh/piglit/ might be useful to test parts of KWin and other OpenGL applications. |
| Gamma Ray | A dynamic code analyzer: http://www.kdab.com/kdab-products/gammaray/ It is more a tool for developers to help them track down problems than a QA tool. |
| Testopia | Testopia provides a test case management together with Bugzilla. This is currently evaluated by the KDE sysadmins: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/testopia/ please be patient |
| Squish | Not Open Source software, but there is a free KDE version. Email [email protected] and say what you're doing to get it. Note that the KDE version isn't mentioned on the website. There is generic information: http://www.froglogic.com/ |
| UI tests | We will need to evaluate what tool would be the best for KDE. A list can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_GUI_testing_tools (incomplete) and here: http://www.opensourcetesting.org |
ATP Examples
The following are examples for application testing procedures:
Application Test Procedure for Umbrello
Quality Guidelines
Plasma Applets: http://community.kde.org/Getinvolved/Testing/Plasma_Applet_Quality_Guidelines
Bug handling
Bug triaging
An essential part in the testing process is to have a cleaned up bugzilla database in terns of actuality of the bugs. For more information about bug triaging and participating in the KDE Bugsquad please see also the KDE Bugsquad wiki
The Extra Mile
There also is an initiative that aims to help KDE applications and workspaces to identify and fix small bugs and UI issues which get in the way of the user: