[Scummvm-devel] Understaffing (Was: What is happening to the ScummVM team?)

[Filippos Karapetis]

> 
> Actually that is understandable but it is IMHO no reason to force 
> releases, like it seems to be the case with the last releases.
> I think unstable / bugged releases will have a worse impact on our 
> reputation than a release less a year.

That is indeed a very good point. But then again, ScummVM has grown very
big over the last years, running several games under a variety of platforms.
Proper testing would mean that all games would need to be tested under
all platforms that ScummVM runs under. This is a lengthy and difficult task,
and the fact that there aren't regular builds of unstable versions of ScummVM
for all the supported platforms makes testing even harder.

> I guess this is the least important point. If all other developers test 
> their code properly we do not need too much managing seeing that our 
> code base is mature enough for most tasks. Maybe we should add some 
> guidelines / tips on various work processes.
> 

Good point, there should be guidelines in the wiki, similar to the guidelines we
got on code formatting.


> I talked a bit with Joost about releases and we came to the conclusion 
> that unit tests and/or a test engine to test certain backend / common 
> code parts might help to find regressions in backend and common code. Of 
> course someone would need to work on that.
> Not that I am not aware of our current tests in test/ but it misses 
> functionality to test for example graphics output, FS code, SearchMan 
> code (related to FS code, just remember the latest problems on Wii and 
> PSP with it), etc.
> 

Good point too, unit tests might help us identify issues in the common code,
but they certainly won't help us find issues in engine code :(



_________________________________________________________________
Windows Live™: E-mail. Chat. Share. Get more ways to connect. 
http://windowslive.com/explore?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_t2_allup_explore_022009
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.scummvm.org/pipermail/scummvm-devel/attachments/20090213/4b55ef17/attachment.html>