[Mono-dev] Unit Testing process: Community Contributions

[Edward Ned Harvey (mono)]

This might have gotten buried in the other thread.  So here's a new thread to bring it up to attention.


Miguel, this question is probably for you.  (And by the way, thank you for everything, and especially thank you for participating here.)

The bottleneck that's preventing much community contribution is *primarily* the fear of community contributions breaking other things.


So this sounds like an area that is actually *feasible* to really make a huge improvement on:



Can we please, formally adopt a process that community contributors can follow, and reasonably expect (a) that their contributions won't break anything, and (b) that their contributions will consequently be reviewed in a reasonable timeframe?



One thing in particular that's missing is a formal definition of how the community contributors should run unit tests.  It doesn't necessarily need to be easy - As we all know, mono is a huge complex and awesome project.  If it's absolutely necessary to run unit tests on 7 versions of linux, OSX, android and iOS, then so be it.  While none of us are prepared to run those kinds of tests right now, you put the target up in the air and tell the community "Figure out some way community contributors can regularly and habitually run these tests before submitting code" and we'll be energized as a result of having a clear *direction* and I'm certain we'll find a way to hit that target.  I know there's lots of work on the platter, but this in particular is something I think you can afford to do, with huge implications of community good will, and long-term growth and adoption.
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