Testing test releases: do not update

[Jef Spaleta]

Mike A. Harris wrote:
> as Jef Spaleta puts it "rawhide might kill babies"
EAT BABIES
not KILL
totally different...totally....yeesh

And you slyly glossed over the one valid point in the thread...
shmuel siegel wrote:
>> I think that a lot of the confusion comes form a lack of a
>> public test plan and the lack of guidelines for testers

If i would agree with anything..i would agree...that a lot of
potentially useful testers, enthusiastic users who want to contribute in
some way, are unduly confused about what is really expected of them
during different phases of the testing process.
Or if not confused...just completely unaware, and don't really have a
good idea of where to start. And I'm warning you, trying to build some
sort of communication mechanism(s) to provide better guidance during
testing is own my personal agenda....which means I'm going to poke
developers in the eye and see if I can get a few crusty nuggets of
useful wisdom out of them, in a effort to cobbling together something
aimed at the potential tester, to get them started with less overall
emotional trauma. And just to be mean...i'm not going to give you my
personal timescale to start the attack....but you've been
warned....start watching the skies.

And i could probably argue, that people who have been involved with
previous rhl beta processes, probably are carrying some misguided
expectations about how the testing is going to work for FC as well
(though i think yer post addresses these old hats to a large extent.)  I
think everyone really needs to come to the table with an understanding
of where the real development bottlenecks are. In my opinion, the
biggest bottleneck is utilization of developer time...developer time is
the scarce resource. Building a testing process thats most convenient
for the testers but puts an undue burden on the developers isn't a
process based on the realities of the resource economics involved.  We
can argue till we are blue in the face about the reality value of having
an extra tree, from the testers point of view, but there is no getting
around the fact that how much really gets done between releases in terms
of building the bits is choked by how many developer manhours there are
to burn on the innumerable priorities. Let's put it this way....no one
can honestly argue that developers are sitting playing games waiting for
actionable bug reports to roll-in. But i also think, in the new world
order of the more open Fedora process, there is a place to make an
effort to recognize the contributions being made from outstanding
testers. I'm not talking about bending the testing process to their
will, but a considerate way to give testers recognition for letting
test1 releases meltdown their boxen..for the good of mankind.

-jef"you will pay for misquoting me..pay..dearly"spaleta