Simplified release testing proposal

[Justin Obara]

At the community meeting yesterday we discussed the future of our releases and about some ways that we could speed up the process to make it easier to get a release out. 

In our current process we take a break from development for an extended period of time. We start with a focussed bug parade where we define a set of specific issues to work on. Once these issues have all been addressed we move to code freeze and run through manual tests of all our components. After all the tests have been completed and all blockers fixed we are able to release.

Test Plans:
http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/Testing+Fluid+Components

The testing phase alone usually takes about 2 weeks to complete. This length of time has made it difficult for us to break from all the work at hand to put out a release. Below is a proposal for how we can speed up that process. Please let me know what you think. We'd like to have this process in place for a 1.5 release of Infusion.

Thanks
Justin

Process:
------------

Rely more heavily on automated testing (unit tests)
Spend 1 - 2 days of community focused manual testing
Provide maintenance releases for any major issues that aren't caught during the release phase

What's Needed:
---------------------

Updated instance of testswarm (to get jenkins integration and reporting)
dedicated vms/machines to run unit tests continuously
updated and simplified browser support where OS isn't part of the equation
similar to YUI's targeted environments http://yuilibrary.com/yui/environments/
drop support for IE6 and IE7
may need to simplify or restructure the test plans

Pros:
------

faster
more consistent testing

Cons:
-------

won't catch as many issues
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