Living in Testopia

Preliminary Support for Bugzilla 4.0

2011-03-11T22:01:00.000-08:00

I have checked in (rev 648) a first pass support for Bugzilla 4.0. I have not had time to do a full regression, so I am guessing there are issues, but I was able to create test plans, cases, and runs. There is no tarball yet, but you can install from BZR. If I get a chance to, I will do some more testing and have a tarball posted soon.

Testopia 2.4

2010-07-21T20:03:00.000-07:00

Testopia 2.4 with support for Bugzilla 3.6 is now available. As always, please back up your data before attempting to install or update.

What You've All Been Waiting For

2010-07-07T10:12:00.000-07:00

Testopia support for Bugzilla 3.6 is nearing completion... or so I thought. It seems though that due to changes in the API handling in Bugzilla, the XMLRPC API will have to be rather extensively overhauled.

XMLRPC API USERS TAKE NOTE!

API calls will have to have a struct (or hash) to contain the arguments as named parameters. To be fair, this is how Bugzilla has always documented their API although it was never enforced until now. However, with the JSON RPC option, it is now enforced and that spills over to XMLRPC as well.

This will of course cause extensive pain for anyone using the existing API as every RPC call will have to be updated with the new parameters. I am working on a solution that can bridge this if possible, but this will likely be the standard going forward.

UPDATE: Max has so generously provided a fix for this problem (See bug 577415). I will include this in the patch until it is released in Bugzilla 3.6.2. This means you can use either named parameters or positional parameters with named being the preferred method. Positional parameters will be deprecated starting with this upcoming release.

Testopia source is now in Bazaar.

I have had Max move the Testopia source into the mozilla Bazaar VCS. The CVS will be mirrored from this, but I encourage anyone downloading from CVS to get the source directly from Bazaar. You can view the development branches and check it out from http://bzr.mozilla.org/bugzilla/extensions/testopia/

Testopia is now a full-fledged Bugzilla extension.

Though it was moved into the extension directory in 3.4, Bugzilla revamped the extension system in 3.6 to provide better support for extension writers. Testopia has been converted to the new system in 3.6. This reduces overhead and compiling issues and should make it faster to execute and take less memory.

Part of this is a change in the name of the Testopia folder from 'testopia' to 'Testopia' which will impact Windows users who are upgrading. Linux users can simply upgrade, merge any customizations, and then delete the 'testopia' (with a lower case 't') folder where as Windows users, and users of case-insensitive file systems in general (thanks justdave), will need to rename the existing 'testopia' folder to something else (such as testopia-old) and then upgrade, merge, and then delete the old folder.

A release should be forthcoming. I'll keep you posted.

Testopia 2.3.1

2010-01-18T15:54:00.000-08:00

A few minor, and not so minor bugs made it into the 2.3 release. This release is to fix some of them.

Testopia 2.3 Released!!!

2009-12-01T16:13:00.001-08:00

Well, it sure took long enough... But good things come to those who wait. :-)

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/testopia/

As mentioned earlier, this moves a lot of files. Please be sure to answer NO when asked during checksetup if you need to merge any of your own changes into the new locations.

As always, enjoy!

2.3 Beta

2009-11-09T16:32:00.000-08:00

We have a beta folks!
Grab it from ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/webtools/testopia/testopia-2.3-BETA-BUGZILLA-3.4.tar.gz

Usual steps apply. Reverse old patch, untar, apply new patch, checksetup. The only thing to note is the new patch is in extensions/testopia now.

As always, this is a beta which means I would not yet recommend it for production installations. But you can try it out on a test install to see how it will work with your data.

As usual, log bugs that you find at http://bugzilla.mozilla.org

For those that don't want to mess with installing it, you can test it out at http://landfill.mozilla.org/testopia

Silly Bugs

2009-11-09T08:54:00.000-08:00

So I was really hoping to have a release done by now. Over the weekend I found a major issue with the database upgrade script which took a few hours of tracking down (calls to bz_alter_column on columns that have REFERENCES need to have the REFERENCES hash included). I think I have finally squashed it, but I ran out of time to test it last week. With luck, I will be done testing in the next couple of days.

For those upgrading from a previous version, you will need to pay attention to the new file structure. Especially if you have made any modifications to the code. If so, you will want to merge your changes into the files in the new location in the extensions directory. All files will have moved there except the cgi scripts.

I wanted to have a script that will clean up the old file structure. Depending on how ambitious I feel this week, I may still try to get to it.

UPDATE:

The following files will be moved into the extensions directory:

testopia (dir) -> extensions/testopia/
Bugzilla/Testopia/ (dir) -> extensions/testopia/lib
Bugzilla/WebService/Testopia/ (dir) -> extensions/testopia/lig/WebService
Bugzilla/Config/Testopia.pm -> extensions/testopia/lib/Testopia/Config.pm
skins/standard/testopia.css -> extensions/testopia/css/testopia.css
template/en/default/testopia/ (dir) -> extensions/testopia/template/en/default

The following templates and template hooks have been moved to the
extensions/testopia/template directory:

template/en/default/admin/params/testopia.html.tmpl
template/en/default/hook/admin/products/confirm-delete.html.tmpl
template/en/default/hook/admin/products/confirm-delete.html.tmpl/confirmation/testopia.html.tmpl
template/en/default/hook/bug/create/created.html.tmpl/message/tr.html.tmpl
template/en/default/hook/bug/create/create.html.tmpl/end/tr.html.tmpl
template/en/default/hook/bug/create/create.html.tmpl/form/tr.html.tmpl
template/en/default/hook/bug/edit.html.tmpl/after_custom_fields/tr.html.tmpl
template/en/default/hook/bug/process/results.html.tmpl/links/tr.html.tmpl
template/en/default/hook/global/banner.html.tmpl/version/testopia.html.tmpl
template/en/default/hook/global/code-error.html.tmpl/errors/testopia_errors.html.tmpl
template/en/default/hook/global/common-links.html.tmpl/link-row/testopia.html.tmpl
template/en/default/hook/global/header.html.tmpl/additional_header/testopia_styles.html.tmpl
template/en/default/hook/global/useful-links.html.tmpl/end/tr.html.tmpl
template/en/default/hook/global/user-error.html.tmpl/errors/tr-user-error.html.tmpl
template/en/default/hook/index.html.tmpl/links/tr.html.tmpl
template/en/default/hook/list/list.html.tmpl/links/tr.html.tmpl

Also, because of the more complete reliance on hooks, Testopia 2.3 will not be compatible with Bugzilla 3.2. In other words, we are back to only supporting a single version of Bugzilla at a time. If you want to upgrade Testopia, you will first need to upgrade Bugzilla to 3.4.3.

The Grand Testopia User Survey

2009-10-28T21:52:00.000-07:00

As I have mentioned once or twice on this blog, I have been steadily working towards finishing a masters degree in Information Technology. Well, the sweat and tears have paid off. Not only has it already improved Testopia immensely (the user documentation was one class project for example) but it has helped me become a better person.

I am finally entering my final course, and of course (pun intended), I need to put together a final capstone project or thesis. I am working on a lengthy white paper about Testopia and how it can be used to improve software both in open source and commercial applications.

To aid me in my research, I have put together a short survey (10 questions since that is the limit for the free surveys an survey monkey), and would like to invite one and all to make their voices heard. The main topic deals with how Testopia is being used around the world and how it can be improved.

Link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=dUVeV_2fiXbuOap9S4_2fYfbRg_3d_3d

Make your opinion count. Tell your friends. *Free warm fuzzies to the first 100 respondents! (Limited time only)

* Warm fuzzies are the good feeling variety and cannot be redeemed for cash or value in any state or country on planet earth. Void where prohibited. Expires 11/30/09 since I gotta turn in my paper by the end of class. Limit to the first 100 respondents because that is the limit for free surveys. Hey, I am cheap, what can I say.

Testopia 2.3 Wrapping Up

2009-10-23T16:33:00.000-07:00

Finally, after much anticipation, stress, and pizza, work on Testopia 2.3 is about done. The biggest challenge that remains is to put together upgrade instructions and possibly a script. After some hemming and hawing, I finally decided to take the plunge and move Testopia into the Bugzilla extensions space, making it a bone fide... well, extension.

This means that if you upgrade to 2.3 from a previous version, and you have made modifications to the Testopia code, you will need to merge your changes into the new location within extensions. I promise the rewards will be well worth the work and wait though. For example, Testopia will now support full XML dumps and import of test plans with all their child data. Also, you can export run results in CSV format to import into your favorite spreadsheet application to build fancy reports.

You will also be able to make a true clone of a test plan now as well. In the past, cloning runs would not link to cloned test cases. Well, now you will be able to copy all your cases as well as your runs and have them magically linked to the copies.

Watch for the announcement in the coming days.

PDF Print FAIL!

2009-09-16T07:46:00.000-07:00

I have been working on an oft requested feature, that of exporting a test plan to a printable format such as PDF. After nearly a week of headache, I give up. It seems that most of the sane sounding Perl PDF packages out there have all died long ago. PDF::FromHTML seemed really promising, but so far it doesn't seem to support modern versions of Adobe and what is worse, throws taint errors when used from the CGI. It also doesn't handle table tags AT ALL! I am not sure how layout is supposed to happen in that case since it also doesn't support CSS.

It appears there are a dozen other modules in the PDF:: space but short of spelling out each dot by hand, it seems that this is a futile effort. I am happy to take suggestions on other modules or packages. If anyone has had success with generating PDF from Perl, and preferably from an HTML template (or directly from Template Toolkit) I would love to hear about it.

In the mean time, I am making progress on rewriting XML export and import. I currently have exporting a plan with all cases and runs and importing a plan with all its cases working. Personally, I don't see a need to import runs and case-run data. But there have been several requests for this functionality. This will be a challenge though getting all the linkages right.

At this point, I am pushing for mid October to release.

Some good news and some bad news...

2009-08-22T19:49:00.000-07:00

So I am finally making real progress on the Bugzilla 3.4 support. At the current rate, I hope to have a final release in the next 4 weeks or so. 3.4 has done a bang up job on getting hooks in most of the places I need them (thanks Max) and now supports extensions in earnest. This adds some complications to the upgrade process. I am in the process of moving all the Testopia files into the extensions directory of Bugzilla. I am not sure there is a sane way to script the upgrade because of this, since anyone with customizations or modifications could potentially be broken. The best thing might be to write up detailed instructions on how to copy and move the files into the extensions area.

For those interested, it appears that the patch for 3.2 applies cleanly to 3.4 and Testopia 2.2 appears to function just fine in that environment. I have not done thorough testing on this so I don't recommend it for production, but if you are itching to use Bugzilla 3.4 with Testopia. Following the instructions for installing with 3.2 should work for the most part.

Now for the bad news.

At the end of May, Novell announced that they were outsourcing almost my entire department. As part of the outsourcing agreement, I was moved to the outsourcing company. I have spent the last couple of months getting acquainted with my new employer and learning what is in store. As part of the transition, many of my current responsibilities will be sent to the support department in India and I will be assigned other roles and projects. I see this as a great opportunity to expand my horizons. As a result of this however, I will not be able to continue making regular contributions to Testopia until, and unless, Novell specifically requests these services from me.

Suffice it to say, the future is hazy at this point. Though I thoroughly enjoy working on this project, I don't have the time or drive to continue doing so outside of my regular work hours except on a very limited basis. As it happens, I inherited this project from Ed after he got hired at a new location that limited his time to devote to the project. Interesting how the wheels of time turn isn't it?

What does this mean for Testopia? Well, I remain committed to getting the 3.4 release completed. I will continue to offer support in the mailing lists and in the chat room as I have time and will continue to work on bug fixes and review submissions. However, I don't see much time for new enhancements and major changes going forward unless this comes from the community. I would like to continue my role in the project until someone expresses interest in coming up to speed with the code and taking on the responsibility.

I sincerely hope that the project will continue to grow. I have faith that there will be enough community involvement to maintain it for the future. I will do what I can to ensure that it does. In the meantime, watch for the next release in the coming weeks.

Live from OSCON 09

2009-07-22T22:46:00.000-07:00

Wow, so I say I am back and then don't post for over a month. I can't believe how the time flies.

So, I am at OSCON this week. You can follow my meanderings on twitter: http://twitter.com/ghendricks that is if you do that sort of thing. I didn't until this week really, but I am really starting to see what makes twitter so great.

Today we had a couple of great inspiring talks that, well... inspired me.
Michel Lopp's keynote for example talked about how every project is the result of decisions. Big decisions yes, made by other people, but moreso small day to day decisions made by the developer that ends up steering the course. It made me realize that Testopia is the way it is today largely because of stupid little decisions that had to be made, and had to be made immediately, without any real vetting or discussion. So the reason why the tags are the way they are for example, is just that. In retrospect, I see that some of those decisions were mistakes, but now are so entrenched that they are hard and painful to pull out. Others turned out to be great successes in my opinion.

Another talkby Ben Collins-Sussman and Fitz has helped me see that I really need to be less worried about making mistakes and more into learning from them.

So with that, where are we? Well, Bugzilla 3.4RC1 is out already. Testopia does not yet support 3.4 but I have begun work on the port. Extjs also released version 3.0 of their toolkit and I am resisting the urge to include it in Testopia. Need to focus on one area at a time I think.

I'm Baaaaack

2009-05-20T15:19:00.000-07:00

OK, so for the benefit if the three of you Testopia users that are left, I thought I would let you know I am wrapping up the project at work that has eaten all my waking hours in the coming weeks, and the focus is going to shift back towards Bugzilla/Testopia for a while. That means I have a lot of catching up to do. Especially given the announcement of Bugzilla 3.4 RC 1 right around the corner.

Also, it seems that Ext 3.0 is out. Just in time to fix a new batch of browser bugs (I hope). It appears that this version is going to have a lot of spiffy new features. Of course, I am not sure how to reconcile the continuing license issuse. No word on whether the existing FLOSS exception will carry over.

I have a slew of new ideas on top of the existing enhancements already logged. There is going to be a lot of work in the coming weeks.

Oh, and for those that use MediaWiki, you might want to check this out.

Stay tuned...

Hiatus

2009-04-14T09:12:00.000-07:00

I have recently been assigned to a new project at work. This has limited the amount of time I am able to spend on Testopia and Bugzilla work while on the job. As I am also working on a masters degree part time, this limits my involvement outside of work. I have been keeping up with help requests and the like but have to take a hiatus on new development and bug fixes (unless those bugs impact our own installation) for a while. I continue to keep tabs on the incoming bugs and hope to have time soon to prioritize them. I also don't want to get too far behind the Bugzilla 3.4 branch so as to have the next version of Testopia ready in time for that release. In the meantime, I do have time to do reviews on patches and I welcome any and all who wish to tackle outstanding bugs or enhancements.

So in case you were wondering... I'm not dead yet.
I think I'll go for a walk.

Testopia 2.2 is Here... Really... sort of...

2009-02-02T10:14:00.000-08:00

Testopia 2.2 is out.

However, there still seem to be some lingering issues with upgrading from earlier versions. Specifically when it attempts to add foreign keys, you may get an error that looks something like this:

Adding foreign key: test_case_activity.case_id -> test_cases.case_id...
DBD::mysql::db do failed: Can't create table './bugs_bugzilla/#sql-965_5bde2.frm' (errno: 150)
[for Statement "ALTER TABLE test_case_activity ADD 
     CONSTRAINT fk_test_case_activity_case_id_test_cases_case_id FOREIGN KEY (case_id)
     REFERENCES test_cases(case_id)
      ON UPDATE CASCADE ON DELETE CASCADE"] at Bugzilla/DB.pm line 502

If you see this, it means (due to my earlier stupidity), that you will need to alter the columns referenced to remove the UNSIGNED attribute. This is most easily done using a nice GUI tool such as Mysql Query Browser where you can simply right click on a table, choose edit, and uncheck the box labeled UNSIGNED then click apply and then execute. However, you can also do it from the regular command line client with a command like:

ALTER TABLE `>table<`
 MODIFY COLUMN `>column<` [INTEGER|SMALLINT|TINYINT]  NOT NULL [AUTO_INCREMENT];

Care should be taken to ensure that the column in question really is an INTEGER type (it may be SMALLINT for example) and if it is already an auto_increment column, you will need to add AUTO_INCREMENT at the end. It is best to do a describe table on both tables before hand to ensure the column types and which are key fields. Oh, and you did back up your database first right?

You may have to repeat this process on a handful of columns. I am working on a script that will (hopefully) clean all these up, but in the mean time, this is how to work these out manually if you are so inclined.

This is on Mysql. I am not sure how do it in Postgres or if this is even an issue there.

A Tentative Step Forward

2008-12-19T09:01:00.000-08:00

OK, so there is now an official BETA of Testopia 2.2 available, and for the fist time, I am trying to support multiple branches of development. 2.2 will support both Bugzilla 3.2 and 3.0.x.

Be sure to download the correct package for your installation!

You can get it from the project home page at http://www.mozilla.org/projects/testopia/ or from FTP
For the most part, upgrading should be the same as usual: unpatch, untar, re-patch, checksetup.
If you are upgrading Bugzilla at the same time, be sure to reverse the patch first.
So far this seems to work for Mysql with Firefox on Linux without mod_perl (my standard development system). I would love it if anyone wants to help test on other environments as I have limited time for testing these days.

I should stress that you should backup your database before attempting the upgrade. It has not been tested on a production system yet.

As usual Comments and questions should be posted to support-webtools@lists.mozilla.org

Happy Holidays

Danger Will Robinson!!!

2008-12-03T16:15:00.001-08:00

Bugzilla 3.2 is finally here. Hooray! :)

I reiterate again now that Bugzilla 3.2 is finally released that Testopia is not yet compatible with the new version. In fact...

UPGRADING BUGZILLA WITH TESTOPIA WILL CAUSE IRREPARABLE DAMAGE TO YOUR DATA!!!

Work is progressing on the upgrades and I will post further information as it comes available. Anyone wishing to help out in this regard is welcome to check out the tip from CVS, although it is not currently production ready.

Vacation over, Back To Work.

2008-10-27T14:08:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the long silence. I just got back from a much needed 2 weeks vacation in southern California. The kids had a blast at Disneyland and my wife got to pet penguins (a life long dream of hers) at Sea World.

Aside from having to reacclimatize to the 50 degree temperature difference, and digging myself out of two weeks worth of email, I am raring to go.

I am working out some issues with the Bugzilla devs dealing with database upgrades and foreign keys in Bugzilla 3.2 as well as ensuring that we have the necessary hooks set up. Otherwise the move to 3.2 is going very smoothly. Watch for the announcements for Bugzilla 3.2 and with luck, Testopia will be ready by then.

Branching

2008-09-12T12:14:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I branched for the Bugzilla 3.2 development. Moving forward, the tip will slowly be converting to the Bugzilla 3.2 codebase while the branch will stick to 3.0.x code.

This is an experiment for me to see if I, in all my ADHD glory, can manage to keep two active branches of development going simultaneously. For those of you interested, the TESTOPIA_2-1_BRANCH is the branch name in CVS.

Right now my thinking is that this will be kept up to date for Bugzilla 3.0.x primarily for bug fixes while new development and new features will stay on the tip. I guess it will depend on how much has to change between Bugzilla 3.0 and 3.2 in the areas where Testopia hooks or patches in. Where a clean patch can be applied, it won't hurt to have new features on both.

Testopia 2.1 Released

2008-09-05T16:20:00.000-07:00

Testopia 2.1 is out.

ChangeLog at https://wiki.mozilla.org/Testopia:ChangeLog_2.1

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/testopia/

Get it while it's hot! ;-)

EDIT:
There were a few installation issues with original tarball, also a couple nasty JavaScript issues that I missed that were messing up IE. An updated tarball is now up. Treat it as an upgrade (unpatch and repatch)

UTOSC 2008

2008-09-03T13:55:00.000-07:00

The Second Anuual Utah Open Source Conference was held last week. This year I presented a basic overview of Ext JS. You can see the details as well as the slides at http://2008.utosc.com/presentation/68/. The session was well attended considering it was the last time slot on the last day. The examples mentioned were just those available with the Extjs 2.2 distribution.

This year's theme was HOWTO and a lot of really great presenters that live just down the street (or the hall in some cases) gave several excellent introductions to topics that interest me. Included was Matt Asay's discussion of the problem of the open commons and open source. At issue of course, is the human tendency of taking for granted things that are open and free to all (i.e. public parks) and are therefore not very well maintained.

Open source is similar. It takes enough people willing to give back in order to maintain a resource. The vast majority of open source projects out there are small, one man (or less likely, woman) operations.

This got me thinking. In all honesty, I can't say that I would be as devoted to Testopia were it not my full time job. I am extremely grateful to the handful of contributors that have stepped up and given back. Perhaps it is as Max points out, that it takes a certain critical mass before regular contributors step forward. If Bugzilla is any gague, then I am guessing Testopia has a few more years before that happens.

In the meantime, work progresses on 2.1 and I will likely release by the end of the week, provided I can get enough testing done by then to satisfy my conscience.

Bugzilla 3.2 Support

2008-08-14T09:46:00.000-07:00

So, as many of you know, Bugzilla 3.2 RC1 was released this week. Already the questions are beginning to trickle in as to when will Testopia support 3.2. The answer is... soon.

How soon is soon? Well, I will direct you to earlier posts on this blog as well as the project site that mention the amount of work involved in first upgrading our installation of Bugzilla and then making Testopia stable with that and then porting it to a vanilla installation. Coupled with the other duties I have to perform, past upgrades have taken a month or more and I don't expect this one to be much different. Once this happens it takes a few weeks work to get Testopia ported and tested. The problem is that during the merging of the code, I pretty much have to freeze Testopia development until the base is stable. So, I am focusing my attention on getting as many features and bug fixes as I can out of the way before that happens.

I am pushing to have Testopia 2.1 ready for the end of the month.

I realize many of you are itching to upgrade your Bugzilla installations, but for now, Testopia will only work with 3.0 and that will probably be the case for the next couple of months. Hopefully in time for the final release of Bugzilla 3.2.

Off to OSCON

2008-07-18T16:12:00.000-07:00

I'll be attending OSCON in Portland again this year. Hope to see some folks around the Mozilla booth where I will be hanging out. Come check it out if you are in that neck of the woods. I'll be standing around shamelessly promoting Bugzilla, Mozilla, and of course Testopia. ;-)

My goal this year? Get my copy of the Camel autographed by Larry and the gang. Oh, and add to my already burgeoning collection of T-Shirts.

Testopia 2.0 Final

2008-07-03T15:40:00.000-07:00

Finally...

2.0 Final is here. A few minor bugs and a major enhancement in the form of a CSV importer made it into this release.

You know the drill... :)

Testopia 2.0 RC2

2008-06-25T08:09:00.000-07:00

There were a few hangups with the latest RC.

First, I wanted to get the test suite finished. My goal was to have a fully automated set of tests that could be run against a sample database to demonstrate all the features of Testopia. I have had the help of a couple of students from Neumont University that have done a great job getting this started. The tests are in the testopia/t folder. What is there is a good start, but I plan to refactor it multiple times in the near future to get it up to snuff.

Second was to get the XMLRPC API fully developed. As of today it is functioning very well. This version introduces batch mode processing as well as a host of improvements. There are a number of changes that are incompatible with the old version unfortunately. The differences can all be viewed in the CHANGELOG and the updated docs can be found at http://landfill.bugzilla.org/testopia2/docs/html/api/index.html

Finally, I really needed to squash that JSON version incompatibility bug. I think it is finally working with the new version of JSON. The latest, 2.10, is required. This means you will need to update JSON before updating Testopia. You might also want to install JSON::XS which will speed JSON up considerably.

If I don't see any serious bug reports in the next week or so, this will likely be the final release candidate.

Enjoy! :D

Testopia at JavaOne?

2008-05-12T16:09:00.000-07:00

So I just returned from a lovely week in San Francisco attending JavaOne. Why would a Perl guy go to a Java conference? Good question, but I learned a lot and can't wait to play with Groovy and Grails. I also picked up some great tips on increasing performance for Ajax apps (of which Testopia is one).

As you may have guessed, I wasn't really able to do much work on Testopia during the last week and I see there is now a Bugzilla 3.0.4 that needs to be tested. I have seen one report already that the patch does not work.

Joy! :(

One of the more interesting sessions I attended was entitled, "How to destroy your community in 10 easy steps." It was rather amusing but I learned that silence is the biggest killer. I am rather disorganized and tend to ignore email when things go crunch. Though I attempt to keep on top of the various channels of communication, often I find it gets pushed to the back burner more than it should. Before I know it, I may have gone a week or more without checking my email, or my blog. I am more available in IRC but may be too busy to answer at times. I honestly wonder how Linus keeps up with it all. Testopia is my day job, and though I love it immensely, I have never been the type to devote all my time to a single thing. When I go home, I prefer to play or work on other things. Maybe that is not what makes a good FOSS developer, I don't know. I guess the bottom line is, I will continue to develop Testopia whether anyone outside Novell finds it useful or not.

I am going to try to be better at responding more quickly to questions and bugs from now on.

A Release Candidate!

2008-04-17T10:19:00.000-07:00

Ok, so after lots of hand wringing and questions as to when Testopia 2.0 will be ready for "prime time," I give you RC1. This release includes many bug fixes and replaces many missing features. It also includes the beta of the new XMLRPC API with support for batch mode processing.

You can get it from FTP. As there are no patch changes, you can simply drop this in place for the most part and you should be good to go.

As always, your feedback is appreciated. Even bug reports. ;-)

Leaping to 2.0

2008-02-29T18:22:00.000-08:00

Happy Leap Day!!!

Why don't we take the leap to Testopia 2.0 while we are at it?

Testopia 2.0 Beta 1 is now available for download from the project home page at http://www.mozilla.org/projects/testopia or from Mozilla's FTP.

Enjoy.

Testopia 2.0 Checked into CVS

2008-02-15T16:12:00.000-08:00

I Just finished checking the Testopia 2.0 code changes into CVS. Apologies to anyone on the CVS mailing list as you will have a lot of spam. LXR won't be too happy either I am guessing, but what can I say?

This is still alpha. I have not even tried installing it against a generic Bugzillla yet, nor has it been released internally at Novell. A few things to note however:

Dojo has been replaced by Ext.
You can download the Ext 2.0 package from http://extjs.com/deploy/ext-2.0.1.zip and install it in the testopia directory where dojo used to be. There is an empty folder as a place holder there called extjs. You don't want to unzip the package into it, rather you need that to be the top level of the extjs file structure. Easiest way might be to unzip the package inside the testopia directory, remove the extjs placeholder folder, and rename the unzipped folder "extjs".

Ext offers a host of new and better features, increases performance, and is just plain sexy. What is more, Testopia should now work much better with the browser made by a certain company in Redmond as well as a host of others.

API has not been updated (yet).
There might be issues with the API as I have not had a chance to test it yet with the new Testopia object modules.

Documentation is now woefully out of date.
Ah, the wonders of open source. Code is fun, docs are not. Over the next couple weeks I will try to get these up to date as best I can. For now, just play.

This version is not yet the Holy Grail of test trackers, but I hope it is a step in the right direction. As always, feedback is appreciated and you can post bugs at https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=Testopia

Now that I am not so overwhelmed by the task of upgrading, I might actually have a chance to catch up on the last four months of email. ;-)

Testopia 2 Preview

2007-12-21T17:05:00.000-08:00

So, I know a lot of people thought I have gone AWOL. In actuality, I have sequestered myself for the last couple months to hack away on Testopia 2.0. Well, all the waiting has paid off.

You can now preview Testopia 2.0 at http://landfill.bugzilla.org/testopia2/tr_show_product.cgi?product_id=15

This is still pre-alpha but it is a good way towards the final goal. You will notice that it is a completely new interface with a lot more Ajax courtesy of Ext 2.0.

With any luck I will have it done in the first few weeks after the new year.

Happy Holidays!

さようなら (goodbye) dojo

2007-09-18T18:52:00.000-07:00

That's it. I have had it with your wily ways. You say you will change, that you are an open book. Lies. I won't stand it any more. I am leaving. I'm leaving and I'm taking my project with me. ; ;

Work has begun on a brand new UI for Testopia. I am working with a number of people to get a better idea of what their frustrations are with the current UI. If anyone is interested in helping out, I have a list of bugs that I am putting together under the UI component. Feel free to add your opinions and give examples of what changes you would like to see.

One of the biggest changes will be the removal of Dojo toolkit. Their 0.9 release is a step in the right direction, but a huge leap backwards in codeability. What little documentation was there has been removed and it seems that there likely won't be any updated docs for quite some time. This, coupled with the numerous performance issues and other bugs has left me little choice but to look elsewhere for my Javascript hits.

This does not mean I am planning to remove the AJAX components of Testopia. On the contrary, I am expanding them. So far, the YUI! toolkit as well as the Ext JS framework are both serious contenders for my affection and adoration. Feel free to weigh in on these on the mailing list. Both are extremely well documented and have numerous examples. I am playing around with the grids for example, to allow the two way sorting and column preferences that people have been clamoring for.

Being as scatterbrained as I am, my focus has been entirely on refactoring code lately, which has left me little time to squash existing bugs (why squash bugs, when you can create dozens more by a little refactoring, eh?). Which is why I am grateful for the help of vrb and a few others who have answered the call to provide support and help where needed. If your question isn't answered right away, be patient. We are few in numbers and have many responsibilities besides Testopia. Rest assured though that we care, and that we will reply eventually.

Now where did I put my computer...

Welcome to Utah! (The State of Testopia)

2007-09-08T08:08:00.000-07:00

This weekend I am coming to you live from the first anual Utah Open Source Conference
Which is being held in my home town of Provo and at the campus of Novell where I work. I was asked to present on Testopia and you can see the slides here. If they look familiar, it is because they are pretty much the same as those found in the docs directory in Testopia.

Some of the keynotes at this conference include names such as Bruce Perens, Tim Riker, and Pete Ashdown. So far it has been very informative and enlightening.

Soooo,
Many of you are wondering what is going on in Testopia development. Well, I have spent most of the last several weeks rewriting the Testopia modules to extend the Bugzilla::Object module. This is making things much cleaner in the scripts and the API. This includes writing much needed POD documentation for these modules and the rest.

I hope to next turn my attention to cleaning up many of the UI issues that have caused the majority of performance problems in Testopia as well as making things a little (read a lot) more intuitive. I still have grand visions for Testopia. Together, we can make this nation great. :)

Citizens of Testopia Unite!

Wow, You Wear Shorts Too?

2007-08-14T11:57:00.000-07:00

Finally made it back from OSCON and a wonderful vacation along the Oregon coast. It has been a much needed break from all the mental gymnastics that I have been doing with work and Testopia. After taking care of the usual fires and sorting through the piles of email awaiting me upon my return, I finally have time to write about my experience.

First, a big thanks to all the Mozilla team for their work and their sponsorship of the great gathering of open source enthusiasts. It was great to meet you all. You can see some pictures of the Mozilla party from Wednesday night here. The Bugzilla Office Hours on Thursday at the Mozilla booth were very well attended and we even sold a few T-shirts.

Speaking of T-shirts, I picked up my years supply at the conference. I needed a second suitcase to pack them all home in which, was a bit of a problem considering we had already packed the car to the gills with two kids and all their stuff. I also picked up the coolest toy ever made for Linux, literally. The Tux droid from KYSOH was discounted at the conference. When I mentioned to my wife that they had a singing talking penguin for sale, she about ruptured my ear drums in her excitement. It is fully programmable with a Python API. Well, I have been looking for an excuse to learn some Python. ;-)

I attended a number of really great sessions that have opened my eyes to new possibilities in the web 2.0 world. I especially enjoyed the Ruby and Rails introductions that I sat in. Alas, if only Ruby on Rails had been around when Bugzilla was young. Tim Brunce also gave an excellent tutorial on some of the advanced functions of the Perl DBI which were also very enlightening.

Among the keynotes at this years OSCON, I found the talk given by Bill Hilf from Microsoft to be rather intriguing. Especially how he sidestepped questions when pressed for details on whether Microsoft plans to sue Linux users for patent infringement. You can view it at the OSCON07 site and come to your own conclusions.

I am looking forward to next year's OSCON. Who knows, maybe we will have enough interest by then to set up some Testopia hours at the booth.

Off to OSCON

2007-07-17T08:33:00.000-07:00

After a tumultuous time getting Testopia 1.3 out the door, I am ready for a break. So, I am heading off to OSCON to hob nob with loads of like minded open source lovers/makers, and the like. Before I go though, I have released Testopia 1.3 BETA 2 which fixes some install bugs. You can get it from the download page at ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/webtools/testopia/

Anyone else going to OSCON? I will be hanging out at the Mozilla booth on Thursday from about 3:00 - 5:30 pm. Hope to see you there.

Drumroll please...

2007-06-26T21:52:00.000-07:00

Testopia 1.3 is here. This is the first version to work with Bugzilla 3.0 and mod_perl.
Unfortunately, it does not work with Bugzilla 2.22.x. For that you need...

Testopia 1.2.2 - This release fixes most of the major bugs in 1.2.1 and also should now (fully?) support PostgreSQL databases.

I appreciate the feedback I have been getting so far. This project has been my first real foray into the world of software engineering. Being fresh out of college when I started this, it has been a great learning experience. Some people have been complaining about how poor the quality is. As I have mentioned in the past, Testopia is developed against a customized version of Bugzilla run by my company. My duties are split between developing Testopia and maintaining our Bugzilla installation.

Part of the reason there are so many bugs in Testopia is that I don't have the time or resources to fully test it against the "Vanilla" Bugzilla before releasing it. My first obligation in developing Testopia is to make sure it works for my employers. Anything beyond this for the open source community is done primarily on my own time.

I am committed to making Testopia the best open source test case management system available. However, I am just one developer with limited time and resources. The point of open source is to have community support. Until the community steps up with some contributions, Testopia will have to be developed on my time line. My time line is determined by my Employer and my personal obligations.

Who comes up with this junk?

2007-05-31T16:00:00.000-07:00

OK, so a lot of you have pointed out that 1.2.1 is a load of excretory waste. I have come to agree with you. It was admittedly a rush job that I scrambled to put out before branching for the work on 3.0.

I have made a branch that includes some fixes to the Bugzilla 2.22 base. The tag name in CVS is TESTOPIA_1_2_BUGZILLA-222 and you can update your installations with this by using the cvs_update.sh script found in the scripts directory. You will have to modify the checkout command first. Change the line that looks like:

cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@cvs-mirror.mozilla.org:/cvsroot co mozilla/webtools/testopia

to

cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@cvs-mirror.mozilla.org:/cvsroot co -r TESTOPIA_1_2_BUGZILLA-222 mozilla/webtools/testopia

I plan to have a new tarball put together sometime next week with these fixes. That is, once I get them all done. I appreciate the dedicated work by Vivian and Dream_Turtle in helping me track these down.

If you find any additional problems, please continue to log them at bugzilla.mozilla.org.

Testopia 1.2.1

2007-05-11T13:39:00.000-07:00

So, many of you are wondering "Now that Bugzilla 3.0 is out, when can I use Testopia with it"? Well, the answer is "Soon." That is to say, as soon as I can get bugzilla.novell.com working right with 3.0. Since Testopia is developed against this installation, much is on hold while I make this transition.

In the meantime however, LpSolit, the Bugzilla QA Guru, has put together a bunch of patches to make Testopia work with PostgreSQL databases (on Bugzilla 2.22.x). These, along with a couple small bug fixes (not being able to create new users for example *cough*) comprise Testopia 1.2.1 which is now available from the Mozilla FTP server.

Those of you who have been logging bugs, thank you for your input. I am reading them and working on them as time allows, even if I don't respond right away. Keep the feedback coming.

Testopia 1.2 and Other News

2007-04-17T08:30:00.000-07:00

I released Testopia 1.2 a few weeks ago now. So far there have been a few bugs with it. I have been hard at work starting the port to Bugzilla 3.0. This has left me with little time for work on these bugs unfortunately. I hope to have the upgrade to Bugzilla 3.0 complete in the next couple of weeks and then go back to address these issues.

Though Testopia has been my full time job for over a year now, I have been working on it during free time as well. Last month my wife herniated two discs in her back, which has meant that I have had little free time to devote to this project. Anyone willing to take a bug or two is more than welcome. There are several very easy one line type fixes that are open right now that I haven't had time to look at. Takers?

Deepest Sympathies to the Family of Garrett Braden

2007-02-26T12:52:00.000-08:00

One of our Testopia contributors was tragically killed in an auto accident on the night of Friday Feb 23, 2007. Garrett was responsible for parts of the environment system in Testopia and created the XML import/export of environments.
Garrett was a recent graduate of Neumont University in Salt Lake City. His profile mentions his work on Testopia. He leaves behind his wife of only a few weeks.

Garrett, you will be missed.

Testopia 1.1.3

2007-02-01T16:04:00.000-08:00

Finally feeling better after two colds, and ear infection, and a flu. The good news is Testopia 1.1.3 is now ready. I fixed a lot of bugs and added some nifty features such as a quciksearch. Now you don't have to remember your plan number, you can enter the all or part of the name (prepended with "plan") and it will come up with your test plan. Same goes for cases, runs, and environments.

You can now also save searches.

Version 1.2 will be all about access control. The current thinking is to have access control lists on test plans that will apply to associated test cases and runs. This will allow plan owners to manage who can get to the objects on their plan. We are thinking of dropping the three groups which are currently used and replace them with a single "testers" group that will have default read and write rights. Beyond that, individuals can be added to plans or you can use a regular expression, similar to current bugzilla groups. I am open to suggestions though.

Happy cough cough Holidays

2007-01-03T09:29:00.000-08:00

Getting sick really sucks, but getting sick on Christmas sucks even worse.
I spent much of my holiday break in bed with a nasty cold. Worst of all though was that the kids caught it too. Course that did not discourage them from waking up extra early Chrsitmas morning.

I am mostly over it now, but still have the residual tiredness.

Anyway Happy Holidays and for your present? Testopia 1.1.2 :-)

Testopia 1.1.1 Released

2006-12-01T13:57:00.000-08:00

I just finished releasing Testopia 1.1.1.
Details at http://mozilla.org/projects/testopia

You can get the tarball from http://landfill.mozilla.org/testopia/testopia-1.1.1.tar.gz
Enjoy.

Time for a relaxing weekend. :-)

Release Numbers

2006-11-29T12:04:00.000-08:00

I survived my trip to Germany. :)
It was an awsome experience and I got to meet all the wonderful people that make SuSE Linux happen. It was also a nice cultural experience. It will take me a few months to lose the pounds from all that Franconian food.

We finally finished work on the delete functionality that people have been clamoring for. The question now is how to release it. Doesn't seem right to call it Testopia 1.2 yet. I think I will stick with 1.1.1 since there are no changes to the database. I haven't settled on a good versioning scheme. I don't like differentiating between stable and unstable branches. Right now it is all rather "unstable" but that is because it is still rather new.

We now plan to move on to group controls. We also need to redesign the tags and categories and builds.

Greetings from Germany

2006-11-05T05:12:00.000-08:00

Well we made it. After 32 hours of flying and waiting for flights and all without sleep, we got to our Hotel in Nuernberg and got settled. We took a quick jaunt around the area to get familiar with the lay of the land and find the office. We found a nice Italian place for dinner where I got to practice ordering in German. I have a long way to go. At least the menu was in Italian and German which meant it easier to figure out what the Entree's were. I think I should invest in a German dictionary. It is really not a good idea to eat over your laptop.

Living in Testopia

Preliminary Support for Bugzilla 4.0

Testopia 2.4

What You've All Been Waiting For

Testopia 2.3.1

Testopia 2.3 Released!!!

2.3 Beta

Silly Bugs

The Grand Testopia User Survey

Testopia 2.3 Wrapping Up

PDF Print FAIL!

Some good news and some bad news...

Live from OSCON 09

I'm Baaaaack

Hiatus

Testopia 2.2 is Here... Really... sort of...

A Tentative Step Forward

Danger Will Robinson!!!

Vacation over, Back To Work.

Branching

Testopia 2.1 Released

UTOSC 2008

Bugzilla 3.2 Support

Off to OSCON

Testopia 2.0 Final

Testopia 2.0 RC2

Testopia at JavaOne?

A Release Candidate!

Leaping to 2.0

Testopia 2.0 Checked into CVS

Testopia 2 Preview

さようなら (goodbye) dojo

Welcome to Utah! (The State of Testopia)

Wow, You Wear Shorts Too?

Off to OSCON

Drumroll please...

Who comes up with this junk?

Testopia 1.2.1

Testopia 1.2 and Other News

Deepest Sympathies to the Family of Garrett Braden

Testopia 1.1.3

Happy *cough cough* Holidays

Testopia 1.1.1 Released

Release Numbers

Greetings from Germany

Happy cough cough Holidays