Re: [boost] [1.35.0] Release candidate quality assurance?

From: Rene Rivera (grafikrobot_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-03-14 11:40:40

Beman Dawes wrote:
> 1.35.0 Release Candidate 1 is about to become available.

It would help me in testing the web site integration if those archives 
followed the names of previous releases (both externally and 
internally). Hence "boost_1_35_0.[zip|tar.gz|tar.bz2|7z" with the top 
level dir of "boost_1_35_0". As otherwise I have to manually twiddle the 
ZIP for use in the web site.

> How can we tell if a release candidate is good enough to ship? While the 
> final decision will come down to a value judgment on the part of the 
> release manager, after consulting with the list, it would be useful to 
> know that obvious showstoppers like missing files aren't an issue.
> 
> It seems to me that this need breaks down into two categories:
> 
> * Checks that could be automated. Perhaps someone could write a script 
> that downloads each of the packages (.bz2, .gz, .7z, .zip), unpacks 
> them, and does some basic QA. For example, runs our inspect tool, and 
> makes sure that the number of problems reported isn't greater than 
> expected. Verifies certain files are present. You get the idea.
> 
> * Checks that require human judgment. Perhaps we could have a check 
> list. It would have to be limited to things that could be checked in a 
> reasonable period of time. We can't expect volunteers to labor for many 
> hours over each release candidate.

Not sure which of the those two you would put this into... But we need 
to run the build/install for the variety of compilers and systems. This 
is something that could be automated, and I had it automated at one 
point using Buildbot. But that's something for next time ;-)

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