>A formalized testing process would be great - I'm envisioning a collection
>of people with spare machines, each with slightly different configs,
>downloading a kernel patch and a test suite patch, building the kernel,
>rebooting, and then building and running an automated test suite for a day
>or two ("make test"). The test suite might consist of a giant Perl script
>coordinating a bunch of programs like crashme, lmbench, TCP/IP exercisers,
>scripts to abuse various file systems and devices, and so on. It could
>even include automatic reporting to a central database of some sort.
>Hopefully with enough participants, a decent subset of possible kernel and
>hardware configurations and features could be checked and we'd have some
>data to point to for people with reliability concerns ("This kernel has
>been tested on 150 different configurations for a total of 7200 hours
>without crashing, enjoy.").
Not to mention regression testing...
I think that this is a good idea. If I had the time to spare I'd volunteer to co-ordinate this (but unfortunately I haven't). However if someone else volunteers to manage the project I'll provide web and FTP servers for transferring information on the project, and I'll dedicate some of my computer hardware to the testing.
Russell Coker