Forum .LRN Q&A: Regression Testing servers for dotLRN set up

I have now finally set up four regression testing servers for dotLRN that are recreated every night (dotlrn-1-0 oracle / pg and cvs HEAD oracle / pg). They are linked from the page dotlrn.collaboraid.net/test.

The primary advantage of having these servers is that if something is committed to cvs that breaks very basic functioality in OpenACS or dotLRN we will know about it within 24 hours. We then also have access to Jeff's excellent cvs browser to figure out what has changed since the last install.

Another way to use these servers is as reference installations. If someone has a problem with a local installation he can check if the problem also occurs on the testing server. It is maybe even a good idea to try to reproduce bugs on one of these servers before they are submitted to the bugtracker.

On the todo list are TclWebtest scripts that run through basic functionality of the calendar, forums, faq and other apps. Another neat thing would be to make sure these servers run all acs-automated-testing tests. Maybe Pete H could comment on how to best do this.

The testing servers are set up with a set of OpenACS/dotLRN TclWebtest scripts that I have written (fetch them like this: cvs -d :pserver:anonymous:@dotlrn.collaboraid.biz:/cvsroot checkout dotlrn-install). I encourage other people to use these scripts and give me feedback so that they can be improved.