QA/Join

Welcome! This page outlines all the activities you can get involved in to help with Fedora QA. It's 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. Please consider joining the test and/or the #fedora-qa IRC channel, so your voice can be heard within the Fedora QA community.

Whether you are testing a stable release, updates-testing, or Rawhide, you can either use the system as you normally would, or you can choose a component of interest and give it as thorough a testing as you have time to give. Push all the buttons, use all the command line options, verify all the documentation, review it for usability, and suggest future features. This is especially useful for software which has undergone major changes lately.

Reporting bugs in Fedora releases
Many people are already involved in Fedora QA, just by reporting problems as you do your regular tasks on Fedora. All you need is a Bugzilla account: create your account. Reporting Fedora bugs as you come across them is a big contribution! We provide some suggestions on reporting bugs. If you want to discuss the bugs before reporting them, we can be found on the test mailing list and the #fedora-qa IRC channel.

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.

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. See QA/Updates Testing for instructions on how to test and report issues with these updates. Please also consider becoming a proven tester: feedback from proven testers is required before updates to critical path packages can be accepted, so this is an important task!

Release validation
The QA group co-ordinates planned testing of the installation process and basic functionality before each Fedora release and pre-release is made, to ensure they reach certain standards known as the Fedora_Release_Criteria. See the installation validation testing and desktop validation testing pages for more information on these processes and how you can contribute to them.

Triaging and managing bugs
Once bugs are reported, QA makes sure they are addressed by the right people and don't get stuck 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. They also shepherd the issues through the process from report to fix released. It's a fun, important job. See the Joining Bugzappers page for details on joining in.

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 by installing these pre-releases and testing them, just as you would a stable release. If you keep running the pre-release and installing updates regularly, you can also help test the release as it is developed, and provide karma for candidate packages for the eventual release just as you can with candidate updates for stable releases - see the earlier section. For information on getting and installing pre-releases, see this page. Report any issues you find to Bugzilla, following the instructions at BugsAndFeatureRequests.

Testing Rawhide
Rawhide is the development version of Fedora. 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 Releases/Rawhide for instructions on how to install or upgrade to, and test, Rawhide. You can test Rawhide without ever needing to install it by using the nightly live builds.

Creating test cases
As well as simply keeping a look out for problems, the QA group develops structured test cases and test plans. See the Category:Test Cases and Category:Test Plans pages for information on the test cases currently available. The test case creation process will tell you how to create test cases.

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 developed include SNAKE and python-bugzilla. We also use Bodhi, Bugzilla and fedora-easy-karma. Tools currently under development include AutoQA. 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.