Status as of 10 Oct 2003:
According to our
Release Criteria, the code is ready for alpha testing. This means that we could cut an alpha tarball, which would be used for testing. Since all of our active core developers and testers are using cvs, we won't pause to drop an alpha tarball unless somebody speaks up needing one. We did not set hard bug-count criteria to complete alpha testing. Our current bug counts are:
I believe that this bug count is almost low enough to pass a reasonable alpha-testing threshold. Our only other remaining alpha hurdle is to get at least one automated test in place for each core module.
It's therefore somewhat arbitrary whether we're in alpha or beta testing. If some hero hasn't contributed a bunch of automated tests (see Simon's very helpful HOWTO for automated tests which will make it into the core docs Any Day Now), we'll probably skip that criterion and declare OpenACS 5 ready for beta testing some time next week. That will introduce new hurdles, primarily related to documentation and tidying up the place.
If you would like to help with this release, please fix your bugs, verify resolved bugs that have come back to you, or pick up new Worker Bee bugs. Even non-coders can help - some bugs just need someone to check the behavior of the current code. Which is conveniently installed on the test servers every day. We also need people to simply use their favorite packages on the test server and look for new bugs. If you read something besides English, try changing the locale and browsing the site in another language.
