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Nicholas Skaggs

Call for Testing: Smart Scopes

As discussed and planned, Smart Scopes have landed! Unity 7 too is landing, with many more features around getting 100 scopes installed, privacy, and dash improvements. For details on what Unity 7 is bringing, check out this post.

In support of the Unity changes, the Unity development team is asking for some extra testing on these specific features. So, we've updated and added a new testcase to our unity suite for these smart scopes. Pay attention to the cases marked mandatory and optional. The testcases relating to the smart scopes have all been marked as mandatory, and are the essential tests to run. That said, it doesn't hurt to run through the optional cases if you have time. We don't like regressions either :-)

So, here's what you need to know!

Never done a call for testing before? Read/Watch this first!; Call for testing walkthrough

Install the new unity from a ppa; Installation Instructions
 
Load the testcases and select one; Unity 7 Testing

Read the testcase, perform the actions listed and record your results.

If you run into any issues, please file a bug

Finally, please note the changelogs and build status found on the tracker, as well as any known bugs while testing. New builds will continue to trickle in over the next few days with new changes coming in. I'd encourage you to test and then re-test later in the week to follow-up on bugs you find, or test the new things that land.

As always please contact me if you run into issues, or have a question.
Thank you in advance for your help, and happy testing everyone!

Nicholas Skaggs

Call for Testing: Smart Scopes

As discussed and planned, Smart Scopes have landed! Unity 7 too is landing, with many more features around getting 100 scopes installed, privacy, and dash improvements. For details on what Unity 7 is bringing, check out this post.

In support of the Unity changes, the Unity development team is asking for some extra testing on these specific features. So, we've updated and added a new testcase to our unity suite for these smart scopes. Pay attention to the cases marked mandatory and optional. The testcases relating to the smart scopes have all been marked as mandatory, and are the essential tests to run. That said, it doesn't hurt to run through the optional cases if you have time. We don't like regressions either :-)

So, here's what you need to know!

Never done a call for testing before? Read/Watch this first!; Call for testing walkthrough

Install the new unity from a ppa; Installation Instructions
 
Load the testcases and select one; Unity 7 Testing

Read the testcase, perform the actions listed and record your results.

If you run into any issues, please file a bug

Finally, please note the changelogs and build status found on the tracker, as well as any known bugs while testing. New builds will continue to trickle in over the next few days with new changes coming in. I'd encourage you to test and then re-test later in the week to follow-up on bugs you find, or test the new things that land.

As always please contact me if you run into issues, or have a question.
Thank you in advance for your help, and happy testing everyone!

Nicholas Skaggs

Kick-starting quality for Ubuntu Touch

I wanted to write a post about the excitement of the new platform and the wonderful new challenges we face ahead of us. Now, given that this platform is being written right now from the ground up, those with a nose for quality instantly perk up. We love well tested applications, and developing with tests in mind from the start is much easier than attempting to retrofit. Seeing the first fruits of the developer effort is very exciting -- good work everyone!

So with that in mind, I started looking at some of the excellent work the core apps teams are doing with there applications. They've been working with the design community to turn the nice mockups into reality. I took the liberty of checking out and running some of the first versions of these applications. The calculator is one that stood out to me as already closing in on its specification. So armed with some of the design conversation for the calculator, I started a branch to create a set of manual tests for ubuntu touch applications, starting with the calculator. If you are interested in quality, now is the time to be involved! The applications can all be installed and run on your phone or even a ubuntu desktop.

So what can you do?

If you're a tester;

• Install the core apps from ppa:ubuntu-touch-coreapps-drivers/daily
• Run the applications, take a look at the designs, and start putting together some testcases
• Push your testcases up to the manual test repository
• As the applications mature in functionality, help test by participating in the calls for testing and cadence weeks for the platform.

If you're a developer and have questions on writing tests for your application, feel free to contact me. I would love to see not only nice unit test driven code, but also some end user tests via autopilot, and I want to make sure you as a developer have the resources to do so. In addition, we as a quality community are happy to help test with you and write some manual tests to do so for your application.

I'm helping!

Nicholas Skaggs

Kick-starting quality for Ubuntu Touch

I wanted to write a post about the excitement of the new platform and the wonderful new challenges we face ahead of us. Now, given that this platform is being written right now from the ground up, those with a nose for quality instantly perk up. We love well tested applications, and developing with tests in mind from the start is much easier than attempting to retrofit. Seeing the first fruits of the developer effort is very exciting -- good work everyone!

So with that in mind, I started looking at some of the excellent work the core apps teams are doing with there applications. They've been working with the design community to turn the nice mockups into reality. I took the liberty of checking out and running some of the first versions of these applications. The calculator is one that stood out to me as already closing in on its specification. So armed with some of the design conversation for the calculator, I started a branch to create a set of manual tests for ubuntu touch applications, starting with the calculator. If you are interested in quality, now is the time to be involved! The applications can all be installed and run on your phone or even a ubuntu desktop.

So what can you do?

If you're a tester;

• Install the core apps from ppa:ubuntu-touch-coreapps-drivers/daily
• Run the applications, take a look at the designs, and start putting together some testcases
• Push your testcases up to the manual test repository
• As the applications mature in functionality, help test by participating in the calls for testing and cadence weeks for the platform.

If you're a developer and have questions on writing tests for your application, feel free to contact me. I would love to see not only nice unit test driven code, but also some end user tests via autopilot, and I want to make sure you as a developer have the resources to do so. In addition, we as a quality community are happy to help test with you and write some manual tests to do so for your application.

I'm helping!

Brian Murray

Errors for Launchpad Users

As I previously mentioned I’ve been working some on the Ubuntu Error Tracker. A bit ago, I added the ability to search for crashes about a source package using a url like errors.ubuntu.com/?package=usb-creator. A source package can also be selected by choosing the package in the package selection drop down box and then entering the specific package name.

In addition to this there is now a selection for ‘packages subscribed to by’. This selection allows you to input a Launchpad user name, for example brian-murray, and see package’s bug listing page to subscribe to bugs about that package. If you don’t want more bug mail but still desire this functionality of errors.ubuntu.com consider setting up a subscription for bug reports that only have the tag ‘bugs-will-never-ever-ever-have-this-tag’.

Just as with the package parameter, you can append ‘user=brian-murray’ to the errors.ubuntu.com url which makes it easier to share queries. Naturally, this also works for teams in Launchpad, like the Foundations Bugs team. However, because this particular team is subscribed to hundreds of packages, we’ve created a table in the database for caching the packages for some teams instead of querying Launchpad for the list of packages every time.

During vUDS I gave a lightning talk where you can see this new feature in action and some of my comic book collection!