A question regarding testing platforms.

Hello all,

I've been doing some testing of issues, specifically
regarding the
Base module. This is not a totally new experience for me,
testing
software in general and testing OOoBase in specific. Over
the last 18
months I have entered a few issues for Base.

However, recently I volunteered to join the QA team for
Base, meaning
that now I get to actually change status on issues, and
given that it
seemed prudent to bring a little more discipline into what I
am doing.

Looking at my computers here I realize I have OOo
distributions from 3
different sources, and that is about to become 4 different
sources.

First - there are distributions downloaded from OOo
mirrors.
Second - there are distributions downloaded from
ftp.linux.cz
Third - OOo distributions from my Linux distributor, Ubuntu
Fourth - I will be looking at what Novel is now offering.

( actually that should be 5, as I also run Kubuntu 64, but
OOo and the
OS itself is not very stable there so I don't use it much..a
shame
cause I really like KDE )

Now, I would of thought that the first two sources should be
giving me
pretty much the same thing - but experience has proven that
not to
always be the case. I will sometimes run into a problem with
OOo from
linux.cz that does not happen in the same version of OOo
retrieved
from an OOo mirror, less often this has been reversed.

In practice however there is usually a milestone difference
between
what I get from linux.cz and what I get from OO.o. Example -
at
present I have OOo-Dev 2.3m_210 from an OOo mirror and
OpenOffice.org
2.3m_211 from linux.cz.

To be clear, I do not build binaries from source, these are
all binary
distributions.

This is getting wordier then I would like so let me cut to
the chase.

Is there a policy, or a recommendation, or opinion, about
which
distributions are valid for testing of issues in the OOo
tracking
system?

What about for opening new issues?

Some things are patently obvious - finding a problem with
VBA support,
or with the new extension for importing/exporting MS XML
file formats
under the Novel distributuion for example rightfully belongs
to Novel.

An example of what is not so clear to me is this. When I
downloaded
the 2.3m_211 file from linux.cz and installed it, it did not
install
as OOo-Dev, rather as OpenOffice.org 2.3. It created a new
directory
structure for this 2.3 release and then quietly removed all
the files
form the OpenOffice.og 2.2 directory tree. The splash
screens all say
2.2, but the help screens say 2.3. Do I just not report this
to
anyone? If I do report it, do I do so via mailing lists and
not the
Issue tracker?

Anyway, I hope you get the gist of what I am wondering
about.

Thanks

Drew Jensen

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Drew, I'm not sure that qa-users is the right list for your 
question 
... most of us here are strictly end-users who simply DL the
latest 
release version, don't touch pre-release versions, and
therefore who may 
not even be aware of things like "distributions"
....

Did you try posting your Q on the qa list instead?

kazar

Andrew Jensen wrote, On 5/2/07 2:34 PM:
> Hello all,
>
> I've been doing some testing of issues, specifically
regarding the
> Base module. This is not a totally new experience for
me, testing
> software in general and testing OOoBase in specific.
Over the last 18
> months I have entered a few issues for Base.
>
> However, recently I volunteered to join the QA team for
Base, meaning
> that now I get to actually change status on issues, and
given that it
> seemed prudent to bring a little more discipline into
what I am doing.
>
> Looking at my computers here I realize I have OOo
distributions from 3
> different sources, and that is about to become 4
different sources.

<snip remainder>

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