NetBeans Quality Engineering

Motto: Quality Is a Feature!

These pages are dedicated to people interested in quality of the NetBeans IDE. We would like to thank to all people who participate in testing of code developers write. There exists a dedicated NetBeans Quality Engineering team, working at Sun Microsystems. As NetBeans IDE is growing in number of features our team needs more assistance from the community - these pages explain how you can help us test NetBeans.

Table Of Contents

• Current Release
• Who We Are & What Do We Do
• How Can I Help Improve Quality of the NetBeans IDE?
• Bug Reporting - IssueZilla
• Quality for NetBeans Module Developers
• Measuring the IDE Quality

Current Release

NetBeans 5.0 is at progress. The most interesting info about it can be found here.

1. Test specifications
2. Q-builds  and their schedule
3. NetCAT 5.0

You can read more about these terms below in the document.

Who We Are & What Do We Do

NetBeans Quality Engineering (QE) is a part of the NetBeans open source community. Everybody who uses NetBeans IDE and reports problems is testing the IDE and improving its quality. You can help us by reporting the problem either by filing a bug report (preferred) or on mailing lists.

Formal process for assuring high level quality of NetBeans IDE exists as well. It starts at early stage of development cycle (e.g. testing on branches before committing to the  development builds) through the Q-build program. Beta testing is done as well, beta releases need to have good enough quality to be tested by the wide NetBeans community. NetBeans IDE quality assurance culminates at High Resistance mode (only showstoppers are fixed) and by Release Candidates. NetBeans quality engineers are focusing mainly on:

• Testing milestone builds (Q-builds, Betas, ...)
• Preparing test specifications (see below)
• Supporting the NetBeans community
• Developing automated tests and test tools.
• Doing performance testing and other special kinds of tests (e.g. accessibility)

How Can I Help Improve Quality of the NetBeans IDE?

NetBeans community appreciates any help from NetBeans users that results in improved quality. NetBeans QE team is looking for a community help to test development builds of NetBeans. Any volunteers testing development builds (including Q-builds, Beta and RC builds) are welcome. More thorough testing is better, but any complete test resulting in well filled bug helps NetBeans. For an inspiration of complete test you can check NetBeans QE test specifications. Test specifications are step by step documents of NetBeans IDE functionality. They describe what is expected behavior at certain scenarios, divergences are usually bugs and these have to be filled into Issuezilla.

Issuezilla is a bug-tracking system used for management for all reported IDE-related issues. All members of the NetBeans open source community use this system to report bugs, enhancements, patches, etc. Next to it it serves as a communication tool. You can subscribe to mailing lists divided per modules to be informed about individual areas of the NetBeans IDE.
Follow these steps to get involved in testing NetBeans:

1. Use NetBeans IDE.
2. Contribute via mailing lists. Subscribing to nbusers mailing list is a good start.
3. Subscribe to additional mailing lists.
4. Register and log in to Issuezilla and file bug reports and enhancement requests.
5. Download and run the latest development, q-builds or beta builds.
6. Execute test specifications on latest development, q-builds or beta builds of NetBeans IDE.
7. Contribute your own ideas for test specifications or scenarios.
8. Involve in the Q-builds program.
9. Participate in programs such as NetBeans Community Acceptance Testing (NetCAT).

It is not necessary to go through all of the above steps. We will appreciate if you will get involved in just part of these activities. It is up to you to decide what level of participation suits you best.

Bug Reporting - IssueZilla

Issuezilla allows you to report bugs, assign these bugs to the appropriate developers and change bug parameters. Note that you do need to enable cookies in your browser to use Issuezilla. You can see more on the following pages:

file a bug - direct link to the 'file new issue' form (you must log-in first). how to report a new issue - points to the page where you can learn how to write bug reports. bug priority guidelines - contains rules that will help you with priority assignment. how to handle issues - description of issue life cycle. good vs. bad reports - helps you understand how to write good reports quick introduction to IssueZilla - basic description of the bug tracking system.

Quality for NetBeans Module Developers

Module developers can find here useful information how to keep high quality of their modules and how to make them rock solid.

• Modules quality criteria (will be updated soon).
• Module installation test specification. How to make sure your module does not break other parts of NetBeans IDE when installed.

Measuring the IDE Quality

Issues-related data are gathered in the IssueZilla bug tracking system. We are using them to generate charts and statistics pages that help us better orientate in bug counts and show the trends on a timeline - see NetBeans Quality in Graphics and Numbers .