Re: Postgres alpha testing docs and general test packs

On Wed, 28 Oct 2009, Thom Brown wrote:

> All we have are a summary of changes. We can find out all the
> information if we do plenty of searching of mailing lists and comparing
> old and new documentation, but obviously this can be off-putting and is
> duplicated for everyone who wants to participate in testing.

For the last release, we had some people who updated blogs etc. with usage
examples for many of the new major features. That doesn't seem to be
happening as well for the 8.5 development.

In any case, the whole process is still being worked out. I for example
and working on some instructions for doing performance regression testing
of the alpha releases. There actually is a full regression test suite
that gets runs all the time on many platforms. The point of the alphas is
actually for you to try *your* tests, not for everyone to test the same
thing.

There is another route to get information here that might be a bit easier
than directly looking up things in the mailing lists or commit logs.
Each alpha is being generated after a CommitFest period during which
patches are commited. The web application organizing that process
provides one way to more easily find the relevant discussion leading up
that patch being applied, and many of those include better/more obvious
examples and documentation. The current alpha2 is based on the results of
https://commitfest.postgresql.org/action/commitfest_view?id=3

--
* Greg Smith gsmith(at)gregsmith(dot)com http://www.gregsmith.com Baltimore, MD