Extras-testing/QA checklist

Revision as of 10:13, 21 June 2010

The software hosted in extras-testing is not ready for normal users!
PLEASE use it only for testing purposes. Be ready to file proper bug reports instead of posting complaints.

Potential problems: crashes, battery drain, poor system performance, full disk space & more - SERIOUSLY!

Backing up your data is recommended. In case of trouble you might need to re-flash your device.

There are several elements to be considered by developers before promoting software to extras-testing. The same criteria are useful for beta testers before approving applications to go to Extras. Please take your time looking at them. Don't evaluate an application lightly! If you are busy or in a hurry just let others do the job.

Please check the points of this list. Don't rush to give thumbs up to an application before it is tested. But don't try to delay the release of an app with minor bugs or enhancement proposals separate from this discrete QA checklist.

1 QA Improvements
- 1.1 QA checklist
- 1.2 Command Line applications
2 Testing software
- 2.1 Power use
- 2.2 top

QA Improvements

There is a ongoing QA improvements discussion in talk.maemo.org (see here and here) and the mailing list. One task is to establish a testing squad. The results can be found at this wiki page: QA improvements

QA checklist

Use this checklist until the extras-testing approval interface is fixed. It helps to see what you have tested and what other testers should still test. This checklist condenses the blockers explained below, read the explanation below before you mark a test as done.

1. [ ] Bug database exist.
2. [ ] Licensing ok.
3. [ ] No illegal/dubious content.
4. [ ] Working provided features.
5. [ ] No missing announced features.
6. [ ] Optification ok.
7. [ ] No performance problems.
8. [ ] No power management issues.
9. [ ] No known security risks.

Additional comments:

Note: Only paste this template if there is some problem with the application or if you have not tested some of the points above, let's not spam the developers.

Copy&paste this to the comment box.
Put [x] for those tests you have done, elaborate on separate row if the test is FAIL.
Vote up if there were no FAILs. If there was even one FAIL, vote down.
UI usability issues cannot be used as a reason for vote down.
Always test functionality - that is, run the program and try if it works as it should.

imaginary example:

1. [x] Bug database exist.
2. [ ] Licensing ok.
3. [ ] No illegal/dubious content.
4. [x] Working provided features.
 FAIL: There is choice between tabs and spaces as separators but spaces are always used (see bug: http://url/123). 
 FAIL: When exporting file the program crashes (see bug: http://url/456)
5. [ ] No missing announced features.
6. [x] Optification ok.
 FAIL: the package uses 1512kb from root.
7. [ ] No performance problems.
8. [ ] No power management issues.
9. [ ] No known security risks.

Additional comments: 
I liked the program, even though, as is, I have to vote it down due to the bugs. I added few usability enhancements to bugzilla, see http://url/567 and http://url/678

Blockers

If one of these criteria is not met, the application cannot go into Extras. A Critical bug at http://bugs.maemo.org/ against the application is required to justify your thumbs down.

Lack of bug reporting database

It needs to be identified in the http://maemo.org/packages/ page. http://bugs.maemo.org/ is the preferred option.

Developers: filling the XSBC-Bugtracker field in your packages addresses this problem. Please see the Tracking bugs in Extras wiki page for the range of valid bugtrackers you can use. You can get your bugtracker at bugs.maemo.org, use an external bugtracker (such as a project bugtracker at garage.maemo.org), or a talk.maemo.org thread. An e-mail address for small projects (wallpapers, for example) can be used with the following field in the debian/control file of the package:

XSBC-Bugtracker: mailto:yourname@example.com

The bugtracker field is mandatory for software to be promoted from Extras-devel to Extras-testing.

Licensing and legal issues

Evident licensing problems or copyright violation. The open source licenses need to be compliant. It needs to be clear that the product is not officially supported by Nokia, Maemo or other commercial entities and trademarks.

Illegal or dubious content

To avoid any doubt, the content must not depict explicit sexual activity; depict or endorse acts that cause or are intended to cause excessive pain or suffering; promote or endorse the misuse of alcohol, tobacco, illegal drugs or other addictive substances; promote intolerance or discrimination based on racial, political, ethnic, religious, gender differences or sexuality; promote invasion of rights of privacy; promote gambling or promote illegal activity.

Broken functionality or reproducible crashes

There is some functionality that does not work or produces crash. Report the problem in the application's bug reporting database. There you can provide a list of steps that lead to the problem.

Missing announced features

Core features advertised through UI or product page don't work or are missing.

Too much memory used in root partition

The application or its dependencies ignore the recommendation to use the eMMC to install as much files as possible, filling the root partition with 500kb or more.

dpkg -L packagename shows all files installed by a package. Also see Opt Problem.

Feel free to add those packages to Opt_Problem/Non-Optified_packages.

System performance compromised

Running the application visibly affects the performance and responsiveness of the system, either through specific actions or leaving the application open/running during a long period of time.

Power management issues

Battery life is diminished beyond acceptable standards by having the application running in the background or just through normal use. The use case of a full day without charging should not be compromised.

If specific applications are explicitly using a lot of power to boost speed or performance (for instance games, Wi-Fi heavy apps) then they must warn the user explicitly with a first boot banner.

Security risks

The main security risks are financial damage, access to private data and harm to device components. If you find such risk in an application then you need to report it and the app can't be uploaded to Extras until a deeper analysis has been done with favourable results.

Warnings

If one of these warning criteria are not met, the developers will be asked to fix them urgently. Still, the app can make it slowly to Extras unless a blocker is raised.

Details at http://maemo.org/packages/ are missing or incomplete: summary, URL to project, updates info.
Application icon missing or not visible in the device. This is only optional for command-line applications.

Testers with good technical knowledge are invited to look deeper in the Maemo Quality considerations (((waiting for Fremantle update))) in order to find weak points in applications waiting to be promoted.

Non-blockers

The extras-testing QA process should not be used to delay the release of new applications and updates with minor/normal bugs or enhancement requests. These can be filed as bugs just as usual.

Developers are encouraged to adopt the Maemo 5 UI guidelines and optimize their application to finger use. However, lack of Maemo 5 UI optimization is not a reason to block an application in its way to Extras unless it is unusable even with stylus.
Maemo 5 offers stock icons covering most regular use cases, but developers can use the icons they prefer as long as they respect copyrights. Broken icons can be a major bug stopping a release to Extras but discussions about beauty/ugliness of a UI are out of scope in the QA process.

Command Line applications

Command line applications are a special case, so two extra checks should be performed, these are blockers:

The application uses the CLI icon in the application manager.
The application description clearly says that the application only runs from the command line.

Testing software

Power use

The N900 has extensive powersaving technologies. It can achieve in some circumstances very good battery life. For example, with a wifi AP that supports powersaving properly, connected over ssh and to a GSM network, battery life can be around 5 days idle.

Leaving an application inactive (accidentally or not) is not uncommon, and the application must not use significant power when doing nothing with the screen locked.

This is a list of some applications that may be of use to ensure that the application you are testing does not damage suspend time.

Powertop - is available in the extras-devel repository.

(for best results, run with screen locked, over ssh, as this minimises normal system activity)

C#      | Ratio  | Avg/dura | Frequency | Ratio
--------+--------+----------+-----------+--------+
     C0 |  57.8% |          |   600 MHz |   0.0% |
     C1 |  22.4% |    0.9ms |   550 MHz |   0.0% |
     C2 |  19.8% |    3.3ms |   500 MHz | 100.0% |
     C3 |   0.0% |          |   250 MHz |   0.0% |
     C4 |   0.0% |          |

This is an example of an app that when idle does not powersave at all. The CPU is continually active.

The 'C0' state is the state where the CPU is actively running - 60% of the time, and it is spending 100% of its time when running at 500 MHz.

The battery may last 10-12 hours.

C1 through C4 are various powersaving states - with C4 being the deepest, it is spending at most 3 ms - 1/300th of a second in shallow powersaving.

In comparison - the same phone when idle - the stats look like:

C#      | Ratio  | Avg/dura | Frequency | Ratio
--------+--------+----------+-----------+--------+
     C0 |   1.0% |          |   600 MHz |   0.0% |
     C1 |   0.0% |    0.2ms |   550 MHz |   0.0% |
     C2 |   3.0% |    5.9ms |   500 MHz |   0.0% |
     C3 |  17.6% |  252.0ms |   250 MHz | 100.0% |
     C4 |  78.3% |  810.5ms |

The phone spends most of its time in the deepest powersaving state, is only actually running 1% of the time, and when it does, is running at 250 MHz.

The battery in this case will last over 110 hours.

top

Top or htop in extras can also be very handy. If when idle, the package you're testing is using 50% CPU - it is never going to be very good for battery life!

Cumulative time can be of use here - if every time you have looked, it has been using .4% CPU, but over half an hour it has used 10 min of CPU, something is wrong.

Retrieved from "http://wiki.maemo.org/Extras-testing/QA_checklist"

Category: Quality Assurance

@@ Line 4: / Line 4: @@
 Please check the points of this list. Don't rush to give thumbs up to an application before it is tested. But don't try to delay the release of an app with minor bugs or enhancement proposals separate from this discrete QA checklist.
-===QA Improvements===
+==QA Improvements==
 There is a ongoing QA improvements discussion in talk.maemo.org (see [http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=41179 here] and [http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=33317 here]) and the [http://lists.maemo.org/pipermail/maemo-community/2010-January/003834.html mailing list]. One task is to [http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=42055 establish a testing squad].
-The results can be find at this wiki page:[[Extras-testing/QA_Checklist/QA_Improvements|QA improvements]]
+The results can be found at this wiki page: [[Extras-testing/QA_Checklist/QA_Improvements|QA improvements]]
 ===QA checklist===
 Use this checklist until the extras-testing approval interface is fixed. It helps to see what you have tested and what other testers should still test. This checklist condenses the blockers explained below, read the explanation below before you mark a test as done.
@@ Line 25: / Line 28: @@
 </pre>
-'''Note: Only paste this template if there's some problem with the application or if you haven't tested some of the points above, let's not spam the developers.'''
+'''Note: Only paste this template if there is some problem with the application or if you have not tested some of the points above, let's not spam the developers.'''
 * Copy&paste this to the comment box.
@@ Line 52: / Line 55: @@
 </pre>
-=== Blockers ===
+==== Blockers ====
 If one of these criteria is not met, the application cannot go into Extras. A Critical bug at http://bugs.maemo.org/ against the application is required to justify your thumbs down.
-==== Lack of bug reporting database ====
+===== Lack of bug reporting database =====
 It needs to be [[Packaging#Bugtracker location|identified in the http://maemo.org/packages/ page]]. http://bugs.maemo.org/ is the preferred option.
@@ Line 65: / Line 69: @@
 The bugtracker field is mandatory for software to be promoted from Extras-devel to Extras-testing.
-==== Licensing and legal issues ====
+===== Licensing and legal issues =====
 Evident licensing problems or copyright violation. The open source licenses need to be compliant. It needs to be clear that the product is not officially supported by Nokia, Maemo or other commercial entities and trademarks.
-==== Illegal or dubious content ====
+===== Illegal or dubious content =====
 To avoid any doubt, the content must not depict explicit sexual activity; depict or endorse acts that cause or are intended to cause excessive pain or suffering; promote or endorse the misuse of alcohol, tobacco, illegal drugs or other addictive substances; promote intolerance or discrimination based on racial, political, ethnic, religious, gender differences or sexuality; promote invasion of rights of privacy; promote gambling or promote illegal activity.
-==== Broken functionality or reproducible crashes ====
+===== Broken functionality or reproducible crashes =====
 There is some functionality that does not work or produces crash. Report the problem in the application's bug reporting database. There you can provide a list of steps that lead to the problem.
-==== Missing announced features ====
+===== Missing announced features =====
 Core features advertised through UI or product page don't work or are missing.
-==== Too much memory used in root partition ====
+===== Too much memory used in root partition =====
 The application or its dependencies ignore the recommendation to [[Documentation/Maemo 5 Developer Guide/Packaging, Deploying and Distributing/Installing under opt and MyDocs|use the eMMC to install as much files as possible]], filling the root partition with 500kb or more.
-dpkg -L packagename shows all files installed by a package. Also see [[Opt Problem]].
+<code>dpkg -L packagename</code> shows all files installed by a package. Also see [[Opt Problem]].
 Feel free to add those packages to [[Opt_Problem/Non-Optified_packages]].
-==== System performance compromised ====
+===== System performance compromised =====
 Running the application visibly affects the performance and responsiveness of the system, either through specific actions or leaving the application open/running during a long period of time.
-==== Power management issues ====
+===== Power management issues =====
-Battery life is diminished beyond acceptable standards by having the application running in the background or just through normal use. The use case of a full day without charging shouldn't be compromised.
+Battery life is diminished beyond acceptable standards by having the application running in the background or just through normal use. The use case of a full day without charging should not be compromised.
 If specific applications are explicitly using a lot of power to boost speed or performance (for instance games, Wi-Fi heavy apps) then they must warn the user explicitly with a first boot banner.
-==== Security risks ====
+===== Security risks =====
 The main security risks are financial damage, access to private data and harm to device components. If you find such risk in an application then you need to [http://maemo.org/community/security/ report] it and the app can't be uploaded to Extras until a deeper analysis has been done with favourable results.
-===Warnings===
+====Warnings====
-If one of these warning criterias is not met, the developers will be asked to fix them urgently. Still, the app can make it slowly to Extras unless a blocker is raised.
+If one of these warning criteria are not met, the developers will be asked to fix them urgently. Still, the app can make it slowly to Extras unless a blocker is raised.
 * Details at http://maemo.org/packages/ are missing or incomplete: summary, URL to project, updates info.
@@ Line 103: / Line 116: @@
 Testers with good technical knowledge are invited to look deeper in the [http://maemo.org/maemo_release_documentation/maemo4.1.x/node16.html Maemo Quality considerations] (((waiting for Fremantle update))) in order to find weak points in applications waiting to be promoted.
-===Non-blockers===
+====Non-blockers====
-The extras-testing QA process shouldn't be used to delay the release of new applications and updates with minor/normal bugs or enhancement requests. These can be filed as bugs just as usual.
+The extras-testing QA process should not be used to delay the release of new applications and updates with minor/normal bugs or enhancement requests. These can be filed as bugs just as usual.
 * Developers are encouraged to adopt the Maemo 5 UI guidelines and optimize their application to finger use. However, lack of Maemo 5 UI optimization is not a reason to block an application in its way to Extras unless it is unusable even with stylus.
 * Maemo 5 offers stock icons covering most regular use cases, but developers can use the icons they prefer as long as they respect copyrights. Broken icons can be a major bug stopping a release to Extras but discussions about beauty/ugliness of a UI are out of scope in the QA process.
-==Command Line applications==
+===Command Line applications===
 Command line applications are a special case, so two extra checks should be performed, these are blockers:
@@ Line 115: / Line 130: @@
 * The application [[Extras-testing/Command_line_applications#Description|description]] clearly says that the application only runs from the command line.
-=Testing software=
+==Testing software==
-==Power use==
-The N900 has extensive powersaving technologies. It can achieve in some circumstances very good battery life.
-For example, with a wifi AP that supports powersaving properly, connected over ssh and to a GSM network, battery life can be around 5 days idle.
+===Power use===
+The [[Nokia N900|N900]] has extensive powersaving technologies. It can achieve in some circumstances very good battery life. For example, with a wifi AP that supports powersaving properly, connected over ssh and to a GSM network, battery life can be around 5 days idle.
 Leaving an application inactive (accidentally or not) is not uncommon, and the application must not use significant power when doing nothing with the screen locked.
 This is a list of some applications that may be of use to ensure that the application you are testing does not damage suspend time.
 * Powertop - is available in [http://maemo.org/packages/package_instance/view/fremantle_extras-devel_non-free_armel/powertop/1.0/ the extras-devel] repository.
@@ Line 141: / Line 155: @@
 The CPU is continually active.
-The 'C0' state is the state where the CPU is actively running - 60% of the time, and it is spending 100% of its time when running at 500MHz.
+The 'C0' state is the state where the CPU is actively running - 60% of the time, and it is spending 100% of its time when running at 500 MHz.
 The battery may last 10-12 hours.
-C1 through C4 are various powersaving states - with C4 being the deepest, it is spending at most 3ms - 1/300th of a second in shallow powersaving.
+C1 through C4 are various powersaving states - with C4 being the deepest, it is spending at most 3 ms - 1/300th of a second in shallow powersaving.
 In comparison - the same phone when idle - the stats look like:
@@ Line 157: / Line 171: @@
        C4 |  78.3% |  810.5ms |
-The phone spends most of its time in the deepest powersaving state, is only actually running 1% of the time, and when it does, is running at 250MHz.
+The phone spends most of its time in the deepest powersaving state, is only actually running 1% of the time, and when it does, is running at 250 MHz.
 The battery in this case will last over 110 hours.
-==top==
+===top===
-Top or [http://maemo.org/packages/view/htop/ htop in extras] can also be very handy. If when idle, the package you're testing is using 50% CPU - it's never going to be very good for battery life!
-Cumulative time can be of use here - if every time you've looked, it's been using .4% CPU, but over half an hour it's used 10 min of CPU, something's fishy.
+Top or [http://maemo.org/packages/view/htop/ htop in extras] can also be very handy. If when idle, the package you're testing is using 50% CPU - it is never going to be very good for battery life!
+Cumulative time can be of use here - if every time you have looked, it has been using .4% CPU, but over half an hour it has used 10 min of CPU, something is wrong.
 [[Category:Quality Assurance]]

Personal tools

Navigation

Views