2. Background Simpletest was added to core in April 2008 Automated testing was put in place with the help of companies like Acquia and NowPublic.com/Examiner.com Automated testing through qa.drupal.org using Simpletest has increased the quality of d7 over d6 tremendously. 2010 is on track to do the same for contrib
3. Problem #1 Problem - Getting clients established for testing is expensive and complicated. I can only imagine the master is the same. A $500 monthly Amazon bill is ouch for individuals. Solution - Continue work on the testing client AMI and modify it so that it can be launched as an on demand spot instance and shut down based on testing load. This becomes complicated because of AMI’s spanning multiple Amazon accounts.
4. Problem #2 Problem - Both enterprises and individual developers should be able to use automated testing in their workflows but very few do. Solution - Solidify the AMI’s to serve as examples but provide scripts to create both masters and clients for testing so that organizations and individuals can deploy locally. Increase quality of documentation and publicity.
5. Problem #3 Problem - Normal people that would like to help the automated testing effort have no way to contribute. Solution – provide a simplified way for users to access qa.drupal.org and upload their ec2 keys so that spot instances can be launched on demand. Allow them to enter monetary thresholds so that they have a maximum monthly commitment they are comfortable with.
6. Problem #4 Problem - Business units have no concept of the tests developers write. Testing is purely a developer-centric exercise. Solution - Provide some type of a UI so that business units can see and possibly manipulate the tests that are available for their products. This could ultimately become a planning/architectural tool.
