Sunday 1 February 2009

PHP TestFest 2009

It's time to start getting the 2009 PHP TestFest underway. The TestFest is a worldwide event in which PHP user groups and individuals contribute to PHP by writing tests for PHP. It's a great way to contribute to one of the most successful open source projects there has ever been, it's also pretty cool to see your name in the the source distribution for code that's running on over 20 million web domains.

So how does it work?


User groups can register by sending a mail to php-qa@lists.php.net. In the mail we'd like you to pick an date for your event (somewhere between April 1st and June 30th), it would be great if you could let us have the name and e-mail for the primary contact too. As these arrive on the QA list, someone (probably me) will transfer them to the TestFest wiki. We will help you to work out what sort of event to run and how to organise it. Individuals can register for the TestFest too, just send a mail to the php-qa@lists.php.net.


User groups (or individuals) can pick areas in which they'd like to write tests, this might be something you know quite well already, or maybe something new you'd like to know about. For example, the London PHP group picked the dom extension last year. I didn't know much about that when we started but I did when we finished!


What do we need?

A bit of infrastructure! Scott MacVicar is putting together an SVN repository for tests so that contributors will be able to commit tests directly. He's still working on how access control will work....more on this later.

Sponsors! We have one offer of ElePHPants. We'll do the same as we did last year and hold a draw at the end of the TestFest. Anyone who contributes a test will have a chance to win one. Of course, the more you contribute the higher your chances will be!

Mentors, mentors and more mentors! We need internals developers who know how to write tests, have karma in cvs.php.net and who can review tests and commit them. Again - if you can help with this send a note to the php-qa@lists.php.net or let me know on IRC (efnet #php.pecl or freenode #phptestfest, #phpwomen).

For more information on PHP's TestFest have a look here and here