Submissions/Finding and fixing software bugs for the Wikipedias

This is an accepted submission for Wikimania 2014.

Submission no. 5021

Title of the submission: Finding and fixing software bugs for Wikipedia

Type of submission (discussion, hot seat, panel, presentation, tutorial, workshop): presentation

Author of the submission: Chris McMahon Cmcmahon(WMF) (talk) 19:11, 26 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

E-mail address: cmcmahonwikimedia.org

Username: Cmcmahon(WMF) (talk) 19:11, 26 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Country of origin: USA

Affiliation, if any (organisation, company etc.): Wikimedia Foundation

Personal homepage or blog

Abstract (at least 300 words to describe your proposal)

This presentation is an overview for a general audience of the systems in place, both computer and human, that help us find and fix software problems before those problems reach the people who use Wikipedia.

On the technical side, we will review and diagram the path taken by the automated regression tests that run in various browsers. We retrieve these tests from source control, use a Continuous Integration tool on one hosted service to start the tests, create new browser instances on another hosted service, point those browsers to the beta labs cluster and the test2wiki test environments, then collect and report the results of every test. This happens at least twice per day, every day.

Then we will trace the path of a software bug through the human beings who handle it. Someone working in Quality Assurance (usually the presenter of this talk) analyzes the test results and reports the bug. The Bug Wrangler assigns importance and alerts appropriate parties if necessary. The feature teams and developers discuss the bug and fix it. The Release Manager makes sure that the fix gets handled properly all the way to production. We will show examples where we prevented significant problems from reaching Wikipedia users.

We do not find bugs every day, but we do find them often. When that happens, the entire cycle from running the automated tests to getting the bug fixed before deployment happens routinely in less than twelve hours, day after day, week after week, month after month. We would like to tell you about it.

Track: Technology, Interface & Infrastructure

Length of session (if other than 30 minutes, specify how long): 30 minutes

Will you attend Wikimania if your submission is not accepted?: yes

Slides or further information (optional)

Special requests

Interested attendees

If you are interested in attending this session, please sign with your username below. This will help reviewers to decide which sessions are of high interest. Sign with a hash and four tildes. (# ~~~~).

Greg G (talk) 17:57, 31 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Quiddity (talk) 19:40, 12 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
the wub "?!" 23:36, 13 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Elitre (talk) 12:52, 20 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Add your username here.

srinivasskc