1 Here are the guidelines for being an Emacs pretester.
2 If you would like to do this, say so, and I'll add you to
6 Information for Emacs Pretesters
8 The purpose of Emacs pretesting is to verify that the new Emacs
9 distribution, about to be released, works properly on your system *with
10 no change whatever*, when installed following the precise
11 recommendations that come with the Emacs distribution.
13 Here are some guidelines on how to do pretesting so as to make it
14 helpful. All of them follow from common sense together with the
15 nature of the purpose and the situation.
17 Please save this file, and reread it when a new series of pretests
20 * Get the pretest from gnu/emacs/emacs-MM.NN.tar.gz and
21 gnu/emacs/leim-MM.NN.tar.gz on alpha.gnu.org.
23 * After a few days of testing, if there are no problems, please report
24 that Emacs works for you and what configuration you are testing it on.
26 * If you want to communicate with other pretesters, send mail to
27 emacs-pretesters@gnu.org. I don't use that mailing list when I send
28 to you because I've found that mailing lists tend to amplify random
29 noise into long discussions or even arguments, and that can waste a
30 lot of time. But when you have a reason to ask other pretesters for
31 help, you can do it that way.
33 * It is absolutely vital that you report even the smallest change or
34 departure from the standard sources and procedure.
36 Otherwise, you are not testing the same program that we asked you to
37 test. Testing a different program is usually of no use whatever. It
38 can even cause trouble, if you fail to tell us that you tested some
39 other program instead of what we are about to release. We might think
40 that Emacs works, when in fact it has not even been tried, and might
43 * Don't use a site-load.el file or a site-init.el file when you pretest.
44 Using either of those files means you are not testing Emacs as a typical
47 Actually, it does no harm to test Emacs with such customizations *as
48 well as* testing it "out of the box". Anything you do that could find
49 a bug is useful, as long as you make sure we know exactly what you
50 did. The important point is that testing with local changes is no
51 substitute for testing Emacs exactly as it is distributed.
53 * Even changing the compilation options counts as a change in the
54 program. The Emacs sources specify which compilation options to use.
55 Some of them are specified in makefiles, and some in machine-specific
56 configuration files. They also give you ways to override this--but if
57 you do, then you are not testing what ordinary users will do.
58 Therefore, when pretesting, it is vital to test with the default
61 (Testing with a different set of options can be useful *in addition*,
62 but not *instead of* the default options.)
64 * The machine and system configuration files of Emacs are parts of
65 Emacs. So when you test Emacs, you need to do it with the
66 configuration files that come with Emacs.
68 If Emacs does not come with configuration files for a certain machine,
69 and you test it with configuration files that don't come with Emacs,
70 this is effectively changing Emacs. Because the crucial fact about
71 the planned release is that, without changes, it doesn't work on that
74 To make Emacs work on that machine, we would need to install new
75 configuration files. That is not out of the question, since it is
76 safe--it certainly won't break any other machines that already work.
77 But you will have to rush in the legal papers to give the FSF
78 permission to use such a large piece of text.
80 * Look in the etc/MACHINES file.
82 The etc/MACHINES file says which configuration files to use for your
83 machine, so use the ones that are recommended. If you guess, you might
84 guess wrong and encounter spurious difficulties. What's more, if you
85 don't follow etc/MACHINES then you aren't helping to test that its
86 recommendations are valid.
88 The etc/MACHINES file may describe other things that you need to do
89 to make Emacs work on your machine. If so, you should follow these
90 recommendations also, for the same reason.
92 * Send your problem reports to emacs-pretest-bug@gnu.org, not
95 Sometimes we won't know what to do about a system-dependent issue, and
96 we may need people to say what happens if you try a certain thing on a
97 certain system. When this happens, we'll send out a query.
99 * Don't delay sending information.
101 When you test on a system and encounter no problems, please report it
102 right away. That way, we will know that someone has tested Emacs on
105 Please don't wait for several days "to see if it really works before
106 you say anything." Tell us right away that Emacs seems basically to
107 work; then, if you notice a problem a few days later, tell us
108 immediately about that when you see it.
110 It is okay if you double check things before reporting a problem, such
111 as to see if you can easily fix it. But don't wait very long. A good
112 rule to use in pretesting is always to report every problem on the
113 same day you encounter it, even if that means you can't find a
114 solution before you report the problem.
116 I'd much rather hear about a problem today and a solution tomorrow
117 than get both of them tomorrow at the same time.
119 * Make each bug report self-contained.
121 If you refer back to another message, whether from you or from someone
122 else, then it will be necessary for anyone who wants to investigate
123 the bug to find the other message. This may be difficult, it is
124 probably time-consuming.
126 To help save our time, simply copy the relevant parts of any previous
127 messages into your own bug report.
129 In particular, if we ask you for more information because a bug report
130 was incomplete, it is best to send me the *entire* collection of
131 relevant information, all together. If you send just the additional
132 information, that makes extra work for us. There is even a risk that
133 we won't remember what question you are sending the answer to.
135 * When you encounter a bug that manifests itself as a Lisp error,
136 try setting debug-on-error to t and making the bug happen again.
137 Then you will get a Lisp backtrace. Including that in your bug report
140 * For advice on debugging, see etc/DEBUG.
142 * Debugging optimized code is possible, if you compile with GCC, but
143 in some cases the optimized code can be confusing. If you are not
144 accustomed to that, recompile Emacs without -O. One way to do this is
149 * Configure tries to figure out what kind of system you have by
150 compiling and linking programs which calls various functions and looks
151 at whether that succeeds. The file config.log contains any messages
152 produced by compilers while running configure, to aid debugging if
153 configure makes a mistake. But note that config.cache reads:
155 # Giving --cache-file=/dev/null disables caching, for debugging configure.
162 * Don't try changing Emacs *in any way* during pretest unless it fails
165 * Always be precise when talking about changes you have made. Show
166 things rather than describing them. Use exact filenames (relative to
167 the main directory of the distribution), not partial ones. For
168 example, say "I changed Makefile" rather than "I changed the
169 makefile". Instead of saying "I defined the MUMBLE macro", send a
172 * Always use `diff -c' to make diffs. If you don't include context, it
173 may be hard for us to figure out where you propose to make the
174 changes. So we might ignore your patch.
176 * When you write a fix, keep in mind that we can't install a change
177 that *might* break other systems without the risk that it will fail to
178 work and therefore require an additional cycle of pretesting.
180 People often suggest fixing a problem by changing config.h or
181 src/ymakefile or even src/Makefile to do something special that a
182 particular system needs. Sometimes it is totally obvious that such
183 changes would break Emacs for almost all users. We can't possibly
184 make a change like that. All we can do is ask you to find a fix that
187 Sometimes people send fixes that *might* be an improvement in
188 general--but it is hard to be sure of this. I can install such
189 changes some of the time, but not during pretest, when I am trying to
190 get a new version to work reliably as quickly as possible.
192 The safest changes for us to install are changes to the s- and m-
193 files. At least those can't break other systems.
195 Another safe kind of change is one that uses a conditional to make
196 sure it will apply only to a particular kind of system. Ordinarily,
197 that is a bad way to solve a problem, and I would want to find a
198 cleaner alternative. But the virtue of safety can make it superior at
201 * Don't suggest changes during pretest to add features or make
202 something cleaner. Every change risks introducing a bug, so I won't
203 install a change during pretest unless it is *necessary*.
205 * If you would like to suggest changes for purposes other than fixing
206 user-visible bugs, don't wait till pretest time. Instead, send them
207 after we have made a release that proves to be stable. That is the
208 easiest time to consider such suggestions. If you send them at
209 pretest time, we will have to defer them till later, and that might
210 mean we forget all about them.
212 * In some cases, if you don't follow these guidelines, your
213 information might still be useful, but we would have to do more work
214 to make use of it. That might cause it to fall by the wayside.
220 # arch-tag: caf47b2c-b56b-44f7-a760-b5bfbed15fd3