How to becomea Joomla!® Tester

THIS STORY IS NOT BASED ON A TRUE STORY.

IT IS A TRUE STORY…

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MARC DECHÈVREV 1.4

About me

Marc Dechèvre |marc woluweb.be | woluweb.be | member

1995 : 1st website with a simple text editor > seed was there (btw only 5 to 10% or population was connected…)

(…)

June 2008 : first website with Joomla!® 1.5 > for personal use & fun

June 2013 : first website with Joomla!® 3.x > as web agent

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This presentation

Goal

The only and whole idea of this presentation is to show that anybody* can contribute to the Joomla! code and in particular to TestingWith other words, no need to be a coder or a developer, YOU can be part of the project !

So we will see

how to install a Joomla! Development Version with Patch Tester

and how Testing works

This presentation on SlideShare

www.slideshare.net/woluweb

This presentation on YouTube (tutorials corresponding to the core of this presentation)

https://www.youtube.com/c/WoluwebWoluweSaintLambert

* This story is not based on a True Story. It is a True Story…

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Table of contents

Introduction

The Lord of the Patches, Part I > The Fellowship of Joomla! (how it all began)

The Lord of the Patches, Part II > The Two Testers (how to contribute)

The Lord of the Patches, Part III > The Return of the Patch Tester (Patch Tester v2 is out !)

How to contribute further

Useful links

Conclusion

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The Lord of

the Patches

Part I

THE FELLOWSHIP OF JOOMLA!

HOW IT ALL BEGAN

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Chapter 1

Go to JoomlaDays, have coffee & share ideas

It all began in Nice @JoomlaDay France 2015

At a coffee break, I met Peter Martin (NL), Roland Dalmulder (NL) and Viktor Vogel (DE)

Discussion came to Joomla! (noooo, really ?)

I shared a couple of personal thoughts/questions

One of these was :“Do you remember Joomla! 1.5 ? You could see for each Category the number of Active and Trashed articles. That is not possible any more in current Joomla! versions… and it is sad because it was very handy when you wanted to (re)organize your content, especially when there are many articles and/or many publishers”

Actually that discussion had triggered something, which could not be stopped anymore

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Chapter 2

Keeping your oath, even if you have no clue

The day after, Peter Martin asked me « I have developed a first version, can you test it ? »Without thinking, I said « Yes, of course »

On the one hand, I was indeed so excitedthat this feature should ever come true.

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But on the other hand, a few seconds later I was feeling a bit like Sam Gamegie enteringMordor :« I made a promise, now I have to keep it… even if I have no clue of the way I have to take ! »I had indeed absolutely *no* idea about how Joomla! Testing works…

Chapter 3

Feature was introduced with Joomla! 3.5

And that feature came out a few weeks ago !

Very nice & clean

You can even click on each counter to see the

corresponding items

Not only for Article Categories, but for any

Category Manager

(native in Joomla! or even third-party)

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More about how this feature came to life(articles & presentations by Peter Martin)

Joomla! Magazine

01 June 2015 > Category Item Count: A Possible New Feature?http://magazine.joomla.org/issues/issue-june-2015/item/2754-category-item-count-a-possible-new-feature

01 July 2015 > Category Item Count: To a Generic Solutionhttp://magazine.joomla.org/issues/issue-july-2015/item/2788-category-item-count-to-a-generic-solution

JoomlaDay UK > 13 February 2016

http://fr.slideshare.net/pe7er/developing-new-feature-in-joomla-joomladay-uk-2016

"The Category Item Counter - developing a new feature"https://youtu.be/CK_tYC-Yy_c

Joomla!dagen Nederland > 16 April 2016

http://joomladagen.nl/programma/presentaties/hoe-komt-een-nieuw-feature-in-Joomla

The Category Counter on the Joomla! Issue Tracker

https://issues.joomla.org/tracker/joomla-cms/6916

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The Lord of

the Patches

Part II

THE TWO TESTERS

HOW TO CONTRIBUTE

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People coding & people testing

Many people out there are just like YOU and me : they love JoomlaAnd they participate to the evolution of the code of Joomla, for instance

By correcting bugs

By improving features

But before any code gets integrated into the next version of Joomla, it has to be tested

In practice, at least two Successful Tests are necessary

Let’s see now in practice how to become a Joomla! Tester !

First download & install latest Joomla! Dev version

Then download & install Joomla! Patch Tester

Finally, choose an Issue, follow the testing instructions and share the result

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Download latest Joomla! Dev version

Go to https://github.com/joomla/joomla-cms

Click on “Download ZIP” button

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Install Joomla! (on local or distant server)

Unzip the downloaded file on your local (or distant) server

Example of local server : XAMPP * (works on all platforms : )

https://www.apachefriends.org/download.html

Installation is easy (or search for tutorials in case of need)

Install Joomla! as usual, except for one thing :

For sample data choose: “Test English (GB) sample data”This is important so everybody uses the same data to test!

After installation, you can see at the bottom right of the Back-end on which version you are working (DEV = “development”)

* In case your installation hangs at the Database installation page, just open "php.ini" file in /xampp/php/php.ini and change “max_execution_time = 30” to “max_execution_time = 3000”. Then stop and restart your server

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If you want to keep your testing environment for further usage, go to Components > Joomla!

Update, click on the “Options” button and choose “Testing” as Update Channel. Save & Close.

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Download and install latest Patch Tester

Go to https://github.com/joomla-extensions/patchtester

Read the Description & Instructions

Don’t click on “Download ZIP” but click on the “releases” tab

Or go directly to https://github.com/joomla-extensions/patchtester/releases

Read the changelog if you are interested

Download the latest version in the format of your choice (zip, tar.gz, tar.bz2)

Example : com_patchtester.zip

Install it like any other extension

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Scroll down

to see more

info

Or directly

click on the

Releases tab

to get to the

download

page

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Discover the Joomla! Patch Tester

Go to Components > Joomla! Patch Tester

Click on “Fetch Data” button

If you already have a Github account, click on the “Options” button to set your username &

password

If you don’t have a Github account, don’t worry : you can already use the Patch Tester as is

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Play with Patch Tester and choose an issue

After the “Fetch Data”, you see the list of Issues

You can hover any title to read a bit more on the tooltip

And even better : simply click on the corresponding “J! Issue” button

This will open the Joomla! Issue Tracker website, where you can even more easily browse all issues and

see their details, comments etc

Within the Patch Tester, you can

directly search on Issue IDs or on keywords

Filter and order the Issues as you like

Choose the Issue on which you want to work

Click on the “Apply Patch” button

The activated Patch is indicated with green background. They can also be filtered

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Follow the testing instructions

Some Issues are technical of course

As a very first Issue to work on, choose an Issue with which you feel comfortable

For this demo, I have selected Issue #9865 “Single registered article guest view”https://issues.joomla.org/tracker/joomla-cms/9865

Attention : the coming screenshots are meant to show how to test Issue #9865In that sense, they are of course specific to this example

Read the instructions carefully

And proceed to the testing

Attention : try to be as meticulous as one can beFor example : try all possible combinations, be challenging, think out of the box (you can even test for different PHP versions, in different conditions, in a multilingual environment, …)If you give a “Go”, the patch has to be successful under all circumstances

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Test without proposed patch

Before applying the Patch, I confirm that I can reproduce the Issue

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Test with proposed patch

I then apply the Patch

And I verify that it does work as intended under all circumstances I can think of

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Revert the patch before testing other issue

Once the Testing is done, I click on the “Revert Patch” button before I tackle another Issue

NB : unless otherwise stated, only one Patch at a time should be applied

(because a given Patch might have side effects on others)

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Share your feedback on Joomla! Issue Tracker

Go to the Joomla! Issue Tracker https://issues.joomla.org and open your Issue

… or simply click on the corresponding “J! Issue” button in the Patch Tester

Log in (or create an account if needed)

Almost on top of the page, you see a “Test this” button

Click on it

In the options (“radio buttons”), select whether the issue is tested (un)successfully

If you have additional comments, feel free to add

(if you have no specific comment, just leave it blank)

Click on “Submit Test Result” button

You can now see your contribution at the bottom of the page

Congratulations !

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Make duplicate of real sites to test on them !

Last but not least, it is also very important that as many different configurations and situations are tested

For example, if everybody only uses

a test website with the Joomla standard Sample Data

running on a local server

with the same PHP version

and without third-party extension installed

not all possible side effects of a patch can be discovered

So the best way to test further is to

duplicate your real sites

update them to the latest staging version

Install Patch Tester and test

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The Lord of

the Patches

Part III

THE RETURN OF THE PATCH TESTER

PATCH TESTER V2 IS OUT !

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The New Patch Tester : v2 is now out !

v1 was already a very strong and advanced tool

But even better : v2 is now out !(excellent coincidence because version 2.0.0 has just come live on 16 April 2016 )

v2 is not a "revolution" but an addition of numerous "small" improvements

v2 now easily available for translation

UX is better and more instinctive for a much better easy to use, especially for "newbies“

A big thank you also to Michael Babker who is closely involved. His own quick summary of v2 :

“It was basically rewritten ground up to better support Joomla! project code and integrate with GitHub

in a non-obtrusive way. And unlike most joomla.org projects, we speak more than one language ;-)”

For even more info : see all the commits and presentation at

https://github.com/joomla-extensions/patchtester/releases

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Patch Tester > InstructionsExcerpt from https://github.com/joomla-extensions/patchtester

To install the latest released version:

Click on the releases link just above the file listing

Click on the button to download either the .tar.bz2, .tar.gz, or .zip packages

Log into your site's administrator section, go to Extension Manager > Install, and install the extension

To use the latest code from this GitHub repo:

Download files into Joomla! install.

Log into your site's administrator section, go to Extension Manager > Discover, click the "Discover" button, and install the extension.

Click Apply Patch to apply the proposed changes from the pull request. Click Revert Patch to revert an applied patch.

You can read more about this extension on the Joomla! Documentation Wiki : https://docs.joomla.org/Component_Patchtester_for_Testers .

Video tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OWgusZgIfk

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Patch Tester

Patch Tester v2 is multilingual !

Contribute to the translation :

https://crowdin.com/project/joomla-patchtester

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How to

contribute

further

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Testing > Enriching the Feedback screen ?NB : since then this suggestion has been shared on https://github.com/joomla/jissues/issues/777

On many occasions, bugs are discovered… only after a new version is officially released. This is often because those Issues were not tested in real conditions (with real websites, with different third-party extensions, on different configurations, etc)

Therefore it could be interesting to have an additional option when giving the feedback about a Test

So, besides

“Not tested”

“Tested successfully”

“Tested unsuccessfully”

It could prove useful to have something like

“Tested with an empty website”

“Tested with Joomla Test Sample Data”

“Tested on a (duplicate of) real website“

This would be useful

For the person validating a PR, who can then better assess the quality of testing

For the testers, in order to raise consciousness that tests should also be conducted in real conditions and not only on Test Sample Data (see example of the future Router)

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Testing > why not improve further and have

more people easily testing ?

https://demo.joomla.org allows already two great things :

A 90-day free Joomla! demo account

But also a Quick Joomla! Test Drive, iea full installation which only lasts 90 minutes

Based on this Quick Joomla! Test Drive which requires no installation and is limited in time, why not having a similar on-line environment with the testing environment and the Patch Tester included ?In one click only, users would then get the chance to participate to the testing !

In particular, this would also easily lower the threshold and increase the number of Testers :

Even users without any experience about installing a local server etc would be able to participate

But also for experienced users it would be a great plus : if in 1 second I can get ready for testing, I will do it. But if I first have to spend 5 minutes to manually install my environment, I tend to procrastinate…

But this suggestion has also downsides, like

Everybody would be testing on same environment (PHP version, …) while we want diversity

testing should be made easy, but we don’t want to lower the quality of testers/testing

this could create vulnerability issues on the test server

Can YOU refine this suggestion or do YOU have another idea in order to improve/facilitate Testing ? Please share !

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Testing > testing in Group

Once you will have tasted the pleasure of contributing to your favourite CMS, who knows,

maybe you will participate next time to a session of "Joomla! Pizza, Bugs & Fun" (bug squashing

session in group).

Because if Joomla! is certainly a unbelievable CMS (Content Management System), it is above

all a very active community...

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Besides Testing > how to become a Joomler:

Let's contribute 10' per week @sanderpotjer

There are also others ways of volunteering

https://volunteers.joomla.org

See Sander Potjer’s presentation

at Joomla! World Conference 2015

@Bangalore, India

YouTube : https://t.co/XGgM4ztMDY

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Useful links

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One page to list them all

Joomla! Development Versionhttps://github.com/joomla/joomla-cms

Patch TesterHomepage https://github.com/joomla-extensions/patchtesterDownload https://github.com/joomla-extensions/patchtester/releases = http://joom.la/patchtesterDoc https://docs.joomla.org/Component_Patchtester_for_Testershttps://docs.joomla.org/Component_Patchtester_for_Testers/nlhttps://docs.joomla.org/Component_Patchtester_for_Testers/fr

Testing Joomla! patches (Issue Tracker & Patch Tester)https://docs.joomla.org/Testing_Joomla!_patcheshttps://docs.joomla.org/Testing_Joomla!_patches/nlhttps://docs.joomla.org/Testing_Joomla!_patches/frhttps://docs.joomla.org/Testing_Joomla!_patches/de

How to report Joomla bugs and issues (“Filing Bugs and Issues”)https://docs.joomla.org/Filing_bugs_and_issueshttps://docs.joomla.org/Filing_bugs_and_issues/frhttps://docs.joomla.org/Filing_bugs_and_issues/nlhttps://github.com/joomla/joomla-cms/blob/staging/.github/CONTRIBUTING.mdhttps://github.com/joomla/joomla-cms/issues/newhttps://issues.joomla.org

If you are a coder : How to Contribute to Joomla through Githubhttp://extensions.joomla.org/blog/item/how-to-contribute-to-joomla-through-github

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[ For advanced users or coders ]

The objective of this presentation was to show how easy it can be – even for a newbie – to

install “manually” the Development version of Joomla! by downloading it

Instead of downloading the Dev version on Github, advanced users or coders can of course

use more sophisticated methods, like cloning. This presents multiple advantages like :

You can also test the installation procedure

You can easily be sure to always use the latest Dev version (via push)

BTW, Marc Antoine Thevenet suggested me 3 alternatives to GIT CLI :

GitHub Desktop : https://desktop.github.com

Tortoise : https://tortoisegit.org

GitKraken : https://www.gitkraken.com (his favourite)

Or to make a full clean when reverting

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Conclusion

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JOOMLA!

The book CMS where YOU are the hero

Do you remember those books where each title was an adventure

in which YOU are the hero ?

Well, Joomla! is definitely the CMS where YOU are the hero !

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Thank you

Feel free to contact me

Marc Dechèvre

+32 474 37 13 12

marc woluweb.be

Skype : woluweb

woluweb.be

twitter.com/woluweb

facebook.com/marc.dechevre

linkedin.com/in/marc-dechevre-68b8172a

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One more thing…

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Hidden heart in the Joomla!® logo – sources

Joomla! Magazine – august 2014 | Sara Watz, President of Open Source Matters