Jul 22 – 28, 2020 Online Event
UTC timezone

Move Fast and Break Everything: Testing major changes to a core component of GNOME

Jul 23, 2020, 4:45 PM
25m
25 Minute Presentation Application Development and Deployment

Speaker

Sam Thursfield

Description

When I discovered Tracker, the search engine that powers GNOME's search and content discovery, I knew I wanted to make improvements but I was scared. What if I introduced a bug to a daemon that's installed by default on millions of PCs? What if I introduced a major bug? What if I caused people's computers to lock up?

Nearly ten years later and I've realized there's no need to be scared. I'm contributing lots of changes for Tracker's version 3.0. The project has been re-designed to give various improvements in flexibility and security. We are now testing and stabilising these changes.

I'll talk about the tools GNOME hackers can use for testing major changes to the platform, and some tools specific to Tracker. And I'll talk about how you can become confident contributing to GNOME's core platform.

Topics will include the nightly VM images, Flatpak runtimes, automated testing, and more.

Level of Difficulty Intermediate

Primary author

Presentation materials