[Wine] Does "Adding Test Data" need a clean up

[Luis Alvarado]

Yesterday I finished providing the test data for about 10 games I started testing about a month ago. What I noticed while adding the test data is the amount of version of distributions and the amount of version for each.

In my case I am using Ubuntu 11.10 but I want to make a point here that this applies to all other distributions that appear in the list. My post is for versions that are so very old that there would be less than 0.01% or maybe none that would actually file a bug from a version, for example Ubuntu 5.04 using Wine. What latest version of wine would actually work in that very old version which would be about 6 or 7 years old.

I know that grabbing test data is one of the most important parts for the wine group to know how well the version of wine is doing but, for me, I do not see the sense of having very VERY old, I mean I really have to say REALLY old here. There are at least 15 options for Ubuntu, from 5.04 up to 12.04.

Remember that this applies to other distribution so my question is: Are this actually need it?

Most Ubuntu users are from 9.10 and above, even more are just 1 or 2 ubuntu versions below the latest one. For example in the case for 12.04, most users will update or move to 12.04 while some will stay in 10.10 up to 11.10. This are just 8 versions (counting the 32bit and 64bit versions here). It would simplify a little the process of adding test data which one would just find faster the version they are using.

Aside from this, I reckon I saw a distribution in that list that was not anymore. So aside from having multiple versions that extend to several years in the past, there might be distributions that do not exist anymore.

What is this important because of the following, taking into account that the test data should help the stable or dev releases of wine:

1. Test Data from old versions, for example a 7 year old Ubuntu 5.04 would not really help the wine community since the version that will be using a very old wine version and also many changes have come to Ubuntu that have made it very difficult to backport a recent wine version to that ubuntu version.

2. Having old data does not help in showing if a program actually has a good or bad ranking. So, somebody having a bronze on the year 2005 for a program would not really be the truth in the year 2012. Forcing users to have a limiter number of version would help in dedicate more time to the actual versions that most people are using. For example the 1.2.x, 1.3.x and 1.4.x releases which have the most people with them.

3. An option in the Test data to include AND save for other tests data the hardware you are using. In all my cases I have to actually type the hardware i am using every time or do a copy paste of it. It would really help to just type it once or save it in an textarea box and know that when I send a new test data the hardware I provided will be used for that PC also. If I happen to have 2 or more PCs, an option to select them from a select tag. This way, simplifying the test data procedure a bit more and giving some additional info the to wine devs about the hardware used to test.

4. Option for "What does not work" and "What was not tested" to disable them in the case where everything does work and everything was tested. It would save the time to having to write "Everything works", "Everything was tested" for example. A better test data to speed things up.

Lastly, but not really that important as the above ones, at least for now, it might help to have an app that can login the user from the Desktop and the user sends the info from its distribution. Saving the time to have to go to the winehq site to enter a test data. This app would include all the questions from the wine test data and also the hardware used to test this.

If I am stepping on somebody with this ideas I must apologies. It was not meant as a bad way. I am only trying to speed up the Test Data recollection, help the users that take their time to do this, help the devs have better information and simply the process.

For me Wine is a very powerful tool that helps in many ways.

I am sorry for any problem that this post would create if this is not to be written here. I just wanted to help.