Hiatus

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...

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

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!!!

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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!

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

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

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

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.