Re: 9.5 release scheduling (was Re: logical column ordering)

On Thu, Dec 11, 2014 at 8:03 AM, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:

>
> 2. The amount of pre-release testing we get from people outside the
> hard-core development crowd seems to be continuing to decrease.
> We were fortunate that somebody found the JSONB issue before it was
> too late to do anything about it. Personally, I'm very worried that
> there are other such bugs in 9.4. But I've given up hoping that any
> more testing will happen until we put out something that calls itself
> 9.4.0, which is why I voted to release in the core discussion about it.
>

We are not particularly inviting of feedback for whatever testing has been
done.

The definitive guide seems to be
https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/HowToBetaTest, and says:

You can report tests by email. You can subscribe to any PostgreSQL mailing
list from the subscription form <http://www.postgresql.org/community/lists/>
.

- pgsql-bugs: this is the preferred mailing list if you think you have
found a bug in the beta. You can also use the Bug Reporting Form
<http://www.postgresql.org/support/submitbug/>.
- pgsql-hackers: bugs, questions, and successful test reports are
welcome here if you are already subscribed to pgsql-hackers. Note that
pgsql-hackers is a high-traffic mailing list with a lot of development
discussion.

=========

So if you find a bug, you can report it on the bug reporting form (which
doesn't have a drop-down entry for 9.4RC1).

If you have positive results rather than negative ones (or even complaints
that are not actually bugs), you can subscribe to a mailing list which
generates a lot of traffic which is probably over your head and not
interesting to you.

Does the core team keep a mental list of items they want to see tested by
the public, and they will spend their own time testing those things
themselves if they don't hear back on some positive tests for them?

If we find reports of public testing that yields good results (or at least
no bugs) to be useful, we should be more clear on how to go about doing
it. But are positive reports useful? If I report a bug, I can write down
the steps to reproduce it, and then follow my own instructions to make sure
it does actually reproduce it. If I find no bugs, it is just "I did a
bunch of random stuff and nothing bad happened, that I noticed".

Chees,

Jeff