User:Adamwill/Draft Join

Welcome! This page outlines all the different activities you can get involved in to help with Fedora QA. It's very easy to get involved and we'd love to welcome more people to the group, so pick one or more of the activities and jump right in. If you do get involved in any of the aspects of QA, please consider joining the fedora-test-list and/or the #fedora-qa IRC channel, so your voice can be heard within the Fedora QA community. You can also add your name to the QA contributor list.

Reporting bugs in Fedora releases

Many people are already involved in Fedora QA right now. It's as simple as running Fedora, and reporting problems when you come across them. All you need to do this is a copy of Fedora, and a Bugzilla account: create an account here. If you report bugs you find in Fedora as you come across them, you're already making a big contribution to Fedora QA, so thanks! You can read about the best way to report bugs here. If you'd like to talk about the issues you find with other testers before reporting them, consider joining the fedora-test-list mailing list, which covers all QA issues, and the #fedora-qa IRC channel.

Testing official updates before they are released

Another easy way to contribute to Fedora QA is to help test official updates for stable Fedora releases before they're released. Updates are made available for pre-release testing in a special yum repository, where you can access them and report on whether they work for you. See this page for instructions on how to test and report issues with these updates.

Triaging and managing bugs

Once bugs are reported, it's important to make sure they're addressed by the right people, and don't get stuck at some point in the process. The BugZappers group is responsible for triaging bugs (ensuring they are complete and accurate reports, and assigning them to the right developers) and shepherding them through the process from report to fix released. It's an important job, and easy to join in with. See the Joining Bugzappers page for details on how you can get involved with the BugZappers group.

Testing Fedora pre-releases

Before an official Fedora release comes out, several alpha, beta and release candidate releases - known collectively as pre-releases - are made available. You can contribute to the quality of the final release by installing these pre-releases and testing them, just as you would a stable release. For information on getting and installing pre-releases, see this page. Report any issues you find to Bugzilla, following the instructions here.

Testing Rawhide

Rawhide is the development version of Fedora. It is a full Fedora distribution containing a daily snapshot of all the latest work taking place in Fedora development. Running Rawhide isn't for everyone, but for moderately experienced users who have a spare test system available or can run it in a virtual machine, testing Rawhide is a great way to contribute to ensuring future releases will be high quality. See this page for instructions on how to install or upgrade to Rawhide, and this page for information on how best to test Rawhide.

Joining Test Days

The Fedora QA group holds regular Test Days, where we get together on IRC and test a specific aspect of Fedora, often with the involvement of a developer who works in that area. See the Test Days page for more information on when and where these are held, and how to join in or even schedule one of your own.

Creating test cases

As well as simply running Fedora releases and looking for problems, the QA group develops structured test cases and test plans for particular applications or processes. See the Test Case page for information on the test cases currently available, and how to get involved with creating new ones.

Developing tools

Some members of the Fedora QA team are involved in developing and maintaining tools to help make testing more efficient. Some of the tools already in use include SNAKE and python-bugzilla. We're also involved in development of Bodhi and improvements to Bugzilla. Tools currently under development include Nitrate, a system for collecting test cases, and Beaker, an automated test lab system. Tool development is a great way to apply engineering skills to QA. Contact Will if you'd like to get involved with building tools for Fedora QA.