KohaCon13: Testing Patches

by Nicole C. on Oct 18, 2013

The Koha Release Managers were up next to talk about a bunch of Koha testing things at KohaCon13. First up was Paul Poulain and he showed us the Koha Sandboxes. Sandboxes are a way for you to test new patches without needing to add the code to your own install.

First you’ll want to start in Bugzilla and find a bug with a patch that you’d like to test and sign off on. At the bottom of the main Bugzilla page there are some canned searches you can use to find bugs that are awaiting sign off.

Paul reviewed how to read a bug report and how to find the patch that needs sign off. After picking the patch to sign off on you go to the Sandboxes list on the wiki and then choose a Sandbox to use. There are 3 for UNIMARC and there are 3 for MARC21 configurations. You will click the link to set up the sandbox, from here it will ask a few questions : the bug number, your name, your email and your translations. Once you get the email with the info for your sandbox you can go back to the wiki and click the link to the staff client or the OPAC (depending on the patch you’re testing). After reviewing the patched code you can go back to your sandbox set up and scroll to the bottom where you can sign off on the patch. Enter your bug number, name, email and the anti-spam check and click ‘OK’. This will update the bug on bugzilla with the new sign off! All of this is done without any knowledge of git or Perl or how the backend of things work. If you do want to know the guidelines for coding you can find them on the wiki.

Next up Chris Cormack showed us the Koha Dashboard where you can see patches that are newly signed off, needing sign off and pushed to Koha and much more. This is a great page to follow if you want to participate in testing Koha developments.