Re: [Xen-devel] Proposal: Feature Maturity Lifecycle

[Ian Jackson <Ian.Jackson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

George Dunlap writes ("Re: [Xen-devel] Proposal: Feature Maturity Lifecycle"):
> So if we accept these definitions, it would would officially make
> adding functionality to osstest a requirement for everybody
> contributing new functionality.  I think at the moment, that may be
> too high a barrier, unless it becomes simple and straightforward to
> write, test, and contribute new tests to osstest.  (I think Stefano
> was trying to do this a bit with the raisin project, but that's not
> complete yet.)

Adding tests to osstest is always going to be difficult, at least for
some features or hardware.  It often involves a mixture of hardware
and software, and may involve complicated setup.  Xen by its nature is
slightly awkward to write tests for, because even for a simple test
you need to have a whole machine set up running Xen, and for many
features you need to teach the test suite how to set up the system to
use them.

That's not to say we shouldn't continue to make osstest easier to
extend, and provide other ways to get tests executed (eg, provide some
working in-tree tests in xen.git).  But we need to acknowledge that
there is often some irreducible difficulty in the task of adding test
cases.


A more practical requirement for a feature with "Supported" status is
that _either_:

 * The feature is tested automatically.

 * At least once during each release freeze, the feature's
   maintainers produce a test report (by a deadline specified by
   the release manager).  Features with no test report get
   downgraded from "Supported" to some lower status.


Ian.

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