Testopia 2 Preview

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

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)

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?

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

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...

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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 :-)