[Boost-testing] Re: What's missing in the summary

From: Aleksey Gurtovoy (agurtovoy_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-06-01 19:03:57

David Abrahams writes:
> When I go to the summary, one of the first things I want to know is
> whether any of the libraries I'm responsible for are regressing.  But
> I can't see all the red squares and the list of libraries at the same
> time.  I'd like to have a 2-D table that's just got a library name in
> each box and a color to indicate its overall health.  

Would it work equally well for you if we highlight the library link in
the left frame according to its overall status? 

> Then I'd like to
> be able to click through to a summary just for that library (The
> current library summary has the same problem: many of the red squares
> can be off the screen), and again I'd like to have a 2-D table of
> compilers/platforms with a color to indicate the overall health of the
> library on that compiler/platform.

Rene suggested to reflect the overall toolset status in the table
header/footer. Would that work for you?

I still maintain that most of the usability issues along the above
lines will be solved by introducing what we call "Regressions View":
basically, a "Release View" with all-green rows/columns filtered out.

>
> Only after clicking through the red squares in _that_ table should I
> see the results of individual tests.
>
> Or... Just give me a table that shows me what's amiss:
>
>   Iterators:  12 regressions, 14 new warnings since release 1.32.0:
>      gcc-2.95-3: test1, test2, test3
>      msvc-8.0: test7, test9
>      ...
>
>   Graph: 3 regressions since release 1.32.0
>
>   Python:     245 regressions since release 1.32.0:
>      gcc-2.95-3: test1, test2, test3
>      msvc-8.0: test7, test9
>
> That seems like an improvement actually, and probably simpler to
> generate. 

That's basically how the old issues page looked like. As a release
manager, I found it only of a moderate usefulness, but it definitely
wouldn't hurt to bring it back to live as long as it doesn't take too
long to generate. As Doug said in another reply, he is looking into
it.

-- 
Aleksey Gurtovoy
MetaCommunications Engineering