We have a 4-week alpha/beta/RC period every 6 months for testing
before a 2.x.0 release. This is announced here, and we get very
little response. I expect the testing window for R 2.13.0 to be
Mar-Apr.
That said, we do quite extensive testing on the main platforms (ix86
and x86_64 Linux, i386 and x64 Windows) and slightly less on ix86 Mac
OS X, x86 Solaris and Sparc Solaris. This includes very frequent
automated runs over all available R packages. And we do also make
daily snapshots available for testing.
R itself comes with a quite extensive test suite, and tools for
testing packages. Some people have chosen to use particular
unit-testing frameworks (such as package RUnits), but these are
notorious for obfuscating problems to the extent that the public
output from the check farms contains almost no clue as to the specific
test failure.
I hope that is enough background for you to explore the status quo and
come with specific proposals. Thank you for your offer of help.
On Thu, 10 Feb 2011, James Goss wrote:
>
> I just want to find out how I could help out with testing on the R
> project. I have many years of software development as well as QA and
> test of everything from chips to supercomputers and really enjoy
> testing. Increasingly, I am working in data mining and large-scale
> statistical kinds of things and "R" is my tool of choice.
>
> Any help is much appreciated.
>
> James Goss
> Los Angeles, CA
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
--
Brian D. Ripley, ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics, http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford, Tel: +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road, +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK Fax: +44 1865 272595