[SoaS] Update on SoaS testing process

[Mel Chua]

We're getting together a testing process and infrastructure for SoaS 
(which should be generally adaptable to Sugar and Activities in the 
future). This is a weekly report of progress; I'll try to do these 
before SoaS weekly meetings 
(http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick_meetings) in the future.

Current progress is at 
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick_release_process#Testing_process

Our test process, which is under construction, will consist of the 
following:

# An agreed-upon image each week for testers to attack. This will be the 
nightly build as of 23:59:59 GMT each Thursday.
# An agreed-upon set of test cases for them to execute (iow, the "test 
plan" thing we haven't had before)
# An agreed-upon place and format for the results from running those 
test cases to be reported to
# An agreed-upon $datetime each week by which all test results for that 
week will be submitted - so that the development team has a chance to 
look at those results and revise the build before the next test image 
goes out.

The first thing we are doing is getting a weekly image under test to 
automatically appear at a static link. We are going to set up a cron job 
so the nightly build (from 
http://alt.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/nightly-composes/soas/ - which we 
need to start up again from the Fedora side) grabs and archives the 
appropriate image-under-test to http://download.sugarlabs.org/soas/test/ 
(which was just created for this very purpose).

Once that is working, we will create a place to report test results, 
write a first example test case, and put out our first weekly call for 
testing.

For those who want to get started helping with testing and don't know 
where to start, writing test cases for Activities is a fine way to do 
it. For an example, see http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Tests/Activity/Analyze 
- think of test cases as "scripts for human beings rather than 
computers," and you won't be far off. A newcomer should be able to 
follow your instructions, start to finish, without needing to ask any 
questions, and end up completing exactly the same process and getting 
exactly the same results you did.

--Mel