[pLog-general] pLog 1.0 testing plan

[Oscar Renalias]

Hello,

since most of you have asked me about a clear plan for the beta
testing period, here you are :-)

My idea was not to start the testing period until at least the English
locale is ready. Since I'm building it from scratch (it was easier to
create it again instead of reusing the old one), it has taken quite a
while but I'm hoping it'll be ready in 2-3 days. Even though some of
the screens need to be finalized (the dashboard, some "intermediate"
screens and other pages like "new locale", "new template") I think
that a preliminary version of the locale will be good enough.

The whole testing period should last, maximum, until April. And before
you say that that's too much, I really do think that we're really
going to need a lot of time for testing... There are way too many
changes in 1.0.

Pending your opinion(s), my idea is to divide the beta testing round
in 2 phases.

Phase 1
---
Phase 1 should last for about 4-6 weeks. Tentative dates are
29.01-25.02 but if things go better than expected, we can always
shorten this period (or extend it if things are not looking good)

Users will be informed where to find the svn repository and how to add
issues to our bug-tracking system. This means that we will not release
.tar.gz packages during this phase and the only way to get the code
will be via svn. The idea is that only people who are really willing
to help will go to the trouble of installing svn, checking out the
code, etc and I'm hoping that only dedicated and motivated users will
join this phase. We might find lots of complicated issues and I'd like
to have people around who know what they're doing.

It also means that whenever a fix is made, everybody who is using code
from svn will get it inmediately instead of waiting for the next beta
snapshot to be released (and therefore making life for people like me
easier)

During this phase we will only test the core features, we will not
test additional templates or plugins. The English locale and all the
missing screens should be finalized during this period.

Phase 2
---
Phase 2 should last from the end of phase 1 until the 1st or 2nd week
of April (again, 4-6 weeks but this can be extended if needed)

During this phase we will start releasing "official" beta packages for
everyone to test (hopefully we will have ironed out all the biggest
issues during phase 1) I haven't decided yet how many of how
frequently these packages should be released.

Translators should finish their work during this phase. Templates and
plugins will be tested during this phase.

What you can do now
---
- We need all help we can get, either just by installing the dev
version and using it as your day-to-day blog or by helping us to
create test scripts (http://devel.plogworld.net/testitool/)

- Take a look at Mantis (http://bugs.plogworld.net) and help out in
some of the issues such as http://bugs.plogworld.net/view.php?id=152 ,
http://bugs.plogworld.net/view.php?id=116 , or
http://bugs.plogworld.net/view.php?id=162.

- Help out in the wiki documentation effort.

If all goes well, we should see a final release sometime in April :-)
but in the meantime, it'd be nice to hear your opinions :-) Once this
plan has been approved we will post it in plogworld.net (and
plogworld.org.tw and plogworld.de, optionally)

Oscar