Roadmap 2015

[Norman Feske]

Hi Wolfgang,

thanks for having taking the time to summarize the stumbling blocks you
encountered. Your request is very much in line with my ambitions.

As Martin already mentioned, there is already an automated testing
infrastructure in place. All the run scripts listed in
tool/autopilot.list are executed on various kernels/boards every night -
all in all there are about 700 test runs. So far, however, these tests
were not visible for the public. From your mail, I get that there is
indeed interest from the community in this "boring" topic. So it seems
worthwhile to explore a way to open up the test environment.

Admittedly, the ambition to test all components goes beyond our
capacities. I agree, though, that the tests should cover the fundamental
components, i.e., those hosted in the base and os repositories. That
said, I think that extending the coverage of our tests is unlikely to
remove the stumbling blocks you encountered - simply because the tests
won't cover many combinations of components.

> This means at the moment if I use something and anything goes wrong there 
> are many possible suspects:
> - Documentation is outdated.
> - Documentation has something missing which is written in some release 
> note/documentation
> - Information from last release note is also already outdated

We need to know about those kind of issues. So far, however, we got
almost no reports about stale documentation. If you encounter outdated
documentation, please open a bug in the issue tracker or drop a note to
the mailing list. I really wonder how often this is a problem for Genode
users?

> - I have done something wrong
> - some component does not work as expected (e.g. from time to time you read 
> "haven't used it for some time, script no longer works")

It is a matter of fact that not all components and run scripts are
considered as important by us regular developers. I.e., many run scripts
are just vehicles for the respective developer to work on a particular
component. The same goes for some components, which are just
experimental. They are worth having at hand from time to time but they
receive no attention otherwise. I think that this is perfectly fine.

What I take from your report, however, is that we should more clearly
mark the line between run scripts and components that we deem as
exemplary and stable, and those that are experimental/work-in-progress.

Then again, the experimental components are certainly the ones people
like to play with as these are often prominently featured in the release
notes. ;-)

To sum it up, with regard to the road map, we should consider:

* Opening up our automated test environment

* Finding a way to tell stable components apart from experimental ones

Cheers
Norman

-- 
Dr.-Ing. Norman Feske
Genode Labs

http://www.genode-labs.com · http://genode.org

Genode Labs GmbH · Amtsgericht Dresden · HRB 28424 · Sitz Dresden
Geschäftsführer: Dr.-Ing. Norman Feske, Christian Helmuth