I'm in the process of writing up a "when and how to test" screed, and I discovered this:

Karl Fogel's book, Producing Open Source Software, has precisely two keyword hits to testing in the ToC.

WTF?

--titus

Legacy Comments

Posted by Ricardo Niederberger Cabral on 2007-08-22 at 17:00.

I counted three. But really, is there any real technical difference
between testing OSS projects versus commercial ones (which the author
probably assumed as something already extensively covered elsewhere)?

Posted by Rams on 2007-08-23 at 00:17.

All non-trivial SVN patches require a test to be submitted; the whole
test suite is in python. The "HACKING" doc has the details.     But
you are right though, the book doesn't emphasize testing - many
hackers like the author do not have testing (as a topic worthy of
attention by itself) on their radar. I am far more concerned about
"Committers" are gods attitude in the book. It doesn't talk about how
to detect and eliminate cliques and cabals. Why does SVN have a
private committers only mailing list ? What are the exact criteria for
for becoming a committer - Why is it so difficult to set it down in
black and white ?

Posted by Titus Brown on 2007-08-23 at 10:53.

Rams -- what project are you talking about?    Ricardo -- I think
there are differences in testing OSS projects, just like there are
differences in communication structure, responsibilities, code
writing, etc... Testing is actually a huge force multiplier when
working on a collaborative project, **especially** one where most
people are, in theory, equal contributors.    --titus

Posted by Rams on 2007-08-24 at 15:55.

Titus Brown,  I meant the SVN project itself, since that project is
used throughout the book as the primary example.  Here is the HACKING
doc:<a href="http://subversion.tigris.org/hacking.html">http://subvers
ion.tigris.org/hacking.html</a>