On Mon, 2011-03-07 at 03:33 -0500, Josef Skladanka wrote:
Hi Alfred,
first of all, let me say, that we're really happy for your interes in AutoQA,
+1 Always nice to see new folks on the list :)
For starters, I'd recommend you to set-up a private instance of
Autotest
(we use Autotest as a test harness) - i.e. autotest server [1] and then
autotest client [2] or [3]. I strongly recommend to use virtual machines in KVM,
so you can play around and break it how many times you want.
[1]
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Install_and_configure_autotest
[2]
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_add_autotest_clients
[3]
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Automate_AutoQA_clients_installation
When you have this set up, install and configure AutoQA [4].
[4]
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Install_and_configure_AutoQA
Once you have it all set up, inspect AutoQA architecture [5],
and try to run [6] and play arount with some already existing tests.
Great examples for the beginning are HelloWorld [7]
or Initscripts [8] test.
[5]
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/AutoQA_architecture
[6]
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Verifying_AutoQA_tests
[7]
http://git.fedorahosted.org/git/?p=autoqa.git;a=tree;f=tests/helloworld;h...
[8]
http://git.fedorahosted.org/git/?p=autoqa.git;a=tree;f=tests/initscripts;...
Of course, feel free to ask as many questions as you need, also
pointing out some non-clear parts in the wiki pages is a great help.
On the other hand, if you do not necessarily want to play around
with autoqa & autotest, you can (for starters) participate in the
Initscripts review project [9], which actually supplies tests for the
initscripts autoqa test.
[9]
https://fedorahosted.org/autoqa/wiki/initscripts
And maybe the most important thing of all - tell us what your interests are,
tell us what you like etc. so we can point you to the right parts of AutoQA.
We have quite a lot of things going on right now (sadly, we'll be mostly testing
new Fedora release in the weeks to come), and I'm sure some of it will fit you.
As Joza said, this last part is one of the more important things to
consider. What are your skills and interests?
It's easy to get lost in the details of the interactions between autoqa
and the test harness. AutoQA is just a glue layer between test cases
and a test harness. The test harness we currently use is autotest. The
team spends a lot of time improving the glue layer to accommodate new
requirements that our tests demand.
So thinking about tests and new test ideas might be another approach
angle. Based on your skills/interests, are there tests you'd like to
see run in Fedora? Alternatively, you can review the current list of
desired tests at
https://fedorahosted.org/autoqa/query?milestone=Future
+test+cases If there is a particular test you are interested in, I'm
sure we can offer some guidance on getting started.
If you just want to get your hands dirty with some smaller scope patches
against the autoqa core, there is a list of small work items at
https://fedorahosted.org/autoqa/query?milestone=Finger+Food
Hope that helps!
James