From: "J.C. Roberts" <list-...@designtools.org>
The developers *CONSTANTLY* *ASK* *FOR* *YOUR* *HELP* with testing, but
this "dull and heavy" work is somehow below most people who just talk
about wanting to become developers and are looking for shortcuts to
becoming one.
Since validity is critical, if you cannot test properly and hopefully
help in the debugging, then you'll never be any good at writing code.
You're not wrong, but that's a rather black and white way of looking at the
world.
When someone starts a new activity - whether that's coding for OpenBSD,
baking cakes or similar, it's usually necessary to have a visible 'quick
win' or
at least sign of progress that encourages the person to carry on and try a
little harder.
Testing does not usually fit into that category - it is indeed 'dull and
heavy'
and usually something people expect to be paid for.
I understand and mostly agree with the viewpoint that the best way is to
download code, decide on what needs fixing and keep plugging at it
until success is achieved.
That's also fine if the OpenBSD community wants to perpetuate the type
of people that code for it and the size of the community.
If (and it is an if) the OpenBSD community wants more resource - both
coding and testing, there probably needs to be a degree more flexibility.
Or, in short, we need to not deter people straight away, and accept that
perhaps sometimes decent programmers start from ones that make lots
of mistakes.
Perhaps a ports TODO similar to the NetBSD ports TODO might help; it
doesn't require quite the same level of kernel or userspace hacking and
provides very visible feedback and thanks once completed.
Neither would I completely rule out a central TODO list linked off
OpenBSD.org. Sure, it might well be ignored, but the possibility remains
that someone might take up the task. NetBSD isn't doing too badly with
Google's Summer of Code initiatives, either.
It might not even be a bad idea to puff up new developers a bit :
'new developer Fred Bloggs decided to solve PR7738 squashing an
annoying bug in the ipz(4) driver. John Smith is very grateful for this
as it enabled him to use his new ServBladePro NZ20 server'
With specific reference to the ISA 486, if there are specific test cases
that
can be run without taking up hours of interactive time, I have a suitable
VLB/ISA 486 that could run them. It's not something I'm interested in
using on a regular basis though - I've got other machines that
are far easier to work with.
PK
