Getting started with Fedora QA Series 1 Part 1

What is Fedora QA?

Fedora is an Open Source Linux based OS which releases once in every 6 months.The environment is very fast paced and with every release people require new features or updating existing features of the packages. To make sure everything works and with each release the performance keeps getting better , testing and quality checks are a must. In Fedora, we have to encompass the user experience as there are thousands and thousands of people who expect a more stable , feature enriched OS getting better with each release.

Understanding the release cycle

Before we jump into how you can get started, let me talk about how the whole process happens.



Rawhide : This is an non freezing , ever growing branch where the contributors push their packages.After a time slice, we branch out the necessary stuffs for release and the rest of the rawhide keeps moving ahead.

Branched: When we pull out a part from Rawhide and start testing and refining it for release.

As, we reach the branch point , the QA towards the release kicks off.

Where can you start?

Here is what you can start off with :

First a FAS account:

Every project need you have an account where in you give your basic details and then you can log in to all the subprojects with the same user id and password.

Link : https://admin.fedoraproject.org/accounts/

Second a Bugzilla account:
No code is 100% bugfree,so whenever you face issues you are more than welcome to file the bug and wait for someone to fix it or you can fix it all by yourself.Whichever be the case, you would need a bugzilla account to start off with.

Link: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/

Third a yourusername@fedoraproject.org alias:

There are some places of QA where you might need to log in with "Persona" and it will be asking you to give youraccount@fedoraproject.org alias. These pages will be looking something like this.

The one step solution to this problem is to configure your email id with the alias.
**You can login with the same email and password of your existing account after mapping it to fedoraproject.org


Link: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EmailAliases
Link (only for Gmail) : https://communityblog.fedoraproject.org/using-fedora-email-alias-gmail/






Now that you have your accounts set up, its time that you know what people are working on and where you can chip in

Introduction to IRC and Mailinglists

IRC
This is a good place to know and interact and have an 1:1 interaction! IRC is meant for people who want to have a topic focused discussion. For all the topics (mostly) you will find channels. For QA you join #fedora-qa.

Mailing list

When you are in doubt and want to have a discussion and also take inputs and catch up with what people are doing in other parts of the world.Mailing list is the place to be. Mailing list is like a subscription based thing. You have to subscribe to the list where you want to post/ask/talk.
In Fedora QA you can subscribe to @test .

Note : After you hit the Login button, you can choose to authenticate by Persona OR FAS OR Yahoo. If you are, this doesn't require to you to have a email alias, you can use any email address where you want to receive notification from time to time. The mailing list is very welcoming, so just introduce yourself !


The next post of mine will be talking about how you get involved with QA.Thanks for reading!