Berlin meeting

The Berlin conference was over before I realised it. I had prepared a presentation, not many people saw it because there was no beamer and, people were more interested in a demo and in discussing what the testing environment is all about.

I demoed the testing environment, I scratch installed the Wikipedia environment many times. I explained the benefits of a shared testing framework, why the ability of installing an environment is so crucial, how we can run the tests the extensions that are installed. Most importantly I explained who the interested parties are.

• A developer spends 70 to 90% of his time testing and debugging, quality testing cuts down on that number
• Brion needs to do the same tests, so when he has the tests he will be more efficient
• Many people run their own MediaWiki installation, they need to know if an extension works for them

For me the most important take home message is what Brion told me: "People want me to look at code, if this code comes with testcases I can run, I am much more likely to have a look".  When you consider the number of extensions that are waiting for Brion to look at, extensions that have community support, it is clear that testing and sharing the test-cases is an essential tool in the battle for Brion's attention.
Thanks,
        GerardM