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Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2011 13:08:13 +0200
Message-ID: <CAH-PCH5DiMt4XwH75gMeaaJdD+FS-iNOfABn_X7eRYG3qJbNXw@mail.gmail.com>
To: =?UTF-8?Q?Johannes_Schl=C3=BCter?= <johannes@schlueters.de>
Cc: Pierre Joye <pierre.php@gmail.com>, Derick Rethans <derick@php.net>, alan@akbkhome.com, 
	internals@lists.php.net
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] PHP 5.3.8 Released!
From: tyra3l@gmail.com (Ferenc Kovacs)

2011/8/24 Johannes Schl=C3=BCter <johannes@schlueters.de>:
> On Wed, 2011-08-24 at 12:24 +0200, Ferenc Kovacs wrote:
>> we could have spotted this via two ways:
>> - those who participated in fixing
>> https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=3D53727 could have spotted this
>> - our tests should have start failing after the change
>
> Third option:
> - RC testers might have spotted and reported it.
>
> I have the impression that very few people actually test these. When
> creating an RC we inform the "primary testers" as well as qa and
> internals list members. From there I get one or two responses in
> general.
>
> When I approach PHP users I often get answers like installing PHP
> without breaking their setup would be complicated (which is not the case
> but maybe needs education?) and they won't have time. I try to use a
> hypothetical case, like we have here in reality, to explain them why it
> is beneficial for their business if it is detected early as then we can
> fix it, fixing something after a release is hard. We also can try to
> improve our tests but we will never be able to test each and every way
> PHP is being used out there in the wild.
>
>
> So how can we motivate people to test new versions during RC not the day
> after it is being released?
>
>
> We don't push them out as news on the php.net frontpage and we don't
> send it out to the announce list for reasons like not confusing users.
> Should we change that? Other ideas?
>
> johannes

agree, should have mentioned that.
I think that currently testing the RCs have a very high barrier.
usually they are going unnoticed for most people and compiling your
own version (with all the extensions that you need) can be really
cumbersome.
- we need to get out the word to the masses (the current php.net site
simply lacks this, maybe the http://prototype.php.net/ will be better
in this regard), for which we also need to lower the barriers to
entry:
- better documentation about how to build your own php version would
be a must, maybe phpfarm can be also useful for this
- we should cooperate with the major php projects out there to run
their testsuites against the new releases or maybe even trunk, if I
remember correctly somebody mentioned that we already do this for some
projects (maybe Pierre mentioned this). this would be an easy way to
boost our test coverage and make the BC breaks more obvious.
- having pre-packaged versions of php available would also help,
testing out the latest mysql versions are much more easy for example,
as I can just grab the Linux - Generic archive, extract it, and voila,
I can test it.
- projects like http://apt.damz.org/ also help

--=20
Ferenc Kov=C3=A1cs
@Tyr43l - http://tyrael.hu