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Submissions/Finding and fixing software bugs for the Wikipedias

From Wikimania 2014 • London, United Kingdom

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
cmcmahon@wikimedia.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

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