Demoing the Wikiation Extension Testing Environment

Yesterday I had the pleasure of presenting the extension testing environment to people of the Wikipedia Usability Initiative (UI). It was a pleasure because many of the requirements for the UI can be met by our environment.


What we discussed and/or demoed:

• the motives for the Wikiation Extension Testing Environment
  
• testing on different operating systems and (LAMP) configurations
  
• the need for the creation and duplication of test environments
• the need for testing environments with different configurations for instance with and without flagged revisions
  
• the installation of extensions and its problems
  
• the ability to script tests and installations in bash or in python
• why integrating Selenium makes sense (remote control and grid)
  
• we demoed the installation of an en.wikipedia lookalike and talked about the need for both internal and external testing
• the need for sharing the test cases as widely as possible
  

What I liked in this conversation was the priviledge of having a look into the "UI kitchen", I got the impression that the Wikipedia Usability Initiative is progressing nicely.
Thanks,
       GerardM

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