[PHP-DEV] Discontinuing qa.php.net

Hi!

I am proposing to move all the content away from qa.php.net and merge it
into php.net

These are the follogwing things currently on the side:

- Documentation on how to write tests
  (PHP: Writing Tests [PHP-QAT: Quality Assurance Team]), and how to handle bug reports
  (PHP: Handling Bug Reports [PHP-QAT: Quality Assurance Team]); which should be integrated in
  wherever we now have internals documentation — please advise where
  that should go.

- Some goals of the QA team (PHP: Projects & Goals [PHP-QAT: Quality Assurance Team]), which we
  can probably remove.

- The latest QA releases (https://qa.php.net/), with SHAs; this should
  be merged with PHP: Downloads in some fashion. It would
  also mean that release managers won't have to update two git
  repositories.

- A whole lot of "make test" reports, last really used in 2017 for PHP
  7.1: PHP: PHP: QA: PFTT — none of the links to the actual
  reports work any way. This also takes up nearly 70GB! of data. I
  recommend we just delete it all.

Opinions?

cheers,
Derick

On 09.09.2024 at 17:52, Derick Rethans wrote:

I am proposing to move all the content away from qa.php.net and merge it
into php.net

Generally +1 on this.

- Documentation on how to write tests
  (PHP: Writing Tests [PHP-QAT: Quality Assurance Team]), and how to handle bug reports
  (PHP: Handling Bug Reports [PHP-QAT: Quality Assurance Team]); which should be integrated in
  wherever we now have internals documentation — please advise where
  that should go.

write-test.php is important, and <https://qa.php.net/phpt_details.php&gt;
maybe even more so. As this is relevant for run-tests.php (I don't
think there are still alternative test runners), php-src/docs seems to
be a good home for it.

handling-bugs.php needs a thorough overhaul, or might be dropped
altogether. Some of the quickfix snippets might still be useful for the
GH issue tracker, though.

- A whole lot of "make test" reports, last really used in 2017 for PHP
  7.1: PHP: PHP: QA: PFTT — none of the links to the actual
  reports work any way. This also takes up nearly 70GB! of data. I
  recommend we just delete it all.

The PFTT reports have always been pretty much useless.
<https://qa.php.net/reports/run_tests.php&gt; had some value, but
apparently the SQLite DB had been corrupted again, so this can probably
be removed as well. I believe the functionality to send these reports
has been dropped from run-tests.php quite a while ago anyway.

Christoph

On Mon, 9 Sept 2024, 17:54 Derick Rethans, <derick@php.net> wrote:

Hi!

I am proposing to move all the content away from qa.php.net and merge it
into php.net

These are the follogwing things currently on the side:

Opinions?

cheers,
Derick

I mainly just reference https://qa.php.net/expectf_details.php. I also link to this from https://github.com/ScriptFUSION/Pip. Keep in mind that PHPUnit (secretly) supports the PHPT format and the QA site is the only (un)official reference for its implementation.

I think the QA subsite should be retired as it is very difficult to discover and accessing the PHPT information is currently somewhat of a dark art. It should not be hidden. But will the old links still work (read: redirect) to the new location?

Cheers,
Bilge

On 09.09.2024 at 22:50, Bilge wrote:

I mainly just reference PHP: Writing Tests [PHP-QAT: Quality Assurance Team]. I also link
to this from GitHub - ScriptFUSION/Pip: 🖨 Immediately prints exceptions and assertion failures during testing, with diagnostics.. Keep in mind that PHPUnit
(secretly) supports the PHPT format and the QA site is the only
(un)official reference for its implementation.

Oh, I thought that had been removed from PHPUnit some time ago;
apparently, it has not.

I think the QA subsite should be retired as it is very difficult to
discover and accessing the PHPT information is currently somewhat of a dark
art. It should not be hidden. But will the old links still work (read:
redirect) to the new location?

Maybe for some time a 308 Permanent Redirect might be a good idea.

Christoph

On 09/09/2024 22:23, Christoph M. Becker wrote:

Maybe for some time a 308 Permanent Redirect might be a good idea.

I don't think there's any reason to qualify with "for some time"; the redirect is just as likely to be useful in 10 years time as 10 weeks. (Sadly, the idea of a permanent redirect causing a source page to rewrite itself has never caught on, outside of search engine indexes.)

Luckily, redirects are cheap: point qa.php.net at the same servers as www.php.net, stick up a <VirtualHost> block with a handful of RewriteRule or Redirect directives, and there's no on-going cost.

Obviously, at some point the redirects might get accidentally broken, but they would also be easy to put back if somebody noticed.

--
Rowan Tommins
[IMSoP]

On Mon, 9 Sep 2024, Christoph M. Becker wrote:

On 09.09.2024 at 17:52, Derick Rethans wrote:

> - Documentation on how to write tests
> (PHP: Writing Tests [PHP-QAT: Quality Assurance Team]), and how to handle bug reports
> (PHP: Handling Bug Reports [PHP-QAT: Quality Assurance Team]); which should be integrated
> in wherever we now have internals documentation — please advise
> where that should go.

write-test.php is important, and <https://qa.php.net/phpt_details.php&gt;
maybe even more so. As this is relevant for run-tests.php (I don't
think there are still alternative test runners), php-src/docs seems to
be a good home for it.

I agree, it should go there. All the "read me" type docs are MD, but the
actual documentation in
php-src/docs/source at master · php/php-src · GitHub is (for good
reasons) in RST. I think it makes sense for the PHPT documentation
(write-test.php and phpt_details) to be a single ".md" in docs/ — one
explains the how and minimal how, whereas the latter is much more
detail).

handling-bugs.php needs a thorough overhaul, or might be dropped
altogether. Some of the quickfix snippets might still be useful for
the GH issue tracker, though.

I say we just drop it.

> - A whole lot of "make test" reports, last really used in 2017 for
> PHP 7.1: PHP: PHP: QA: PFTT — none of the links to the
> actual reports work any way. This also takes up nearly 70GB! of
> data. I recommend we just delete it all.

The PFTT reports have always been pretty much useless.
<https://qa.php.net/reports/run_tests.php&gt; had some value, but
apparently the SQLite DB had been corrupted again, so this can
probably be removed as well. I believe the functionality to send
these reports has been dropped from run-tests.php quite a while ago
anyway.

I tried to see what was going on there, but on the command line, the
8.2.18 file is fine (there is a file for every version). It's just an
empty database and the "reports" table doesn't exist.

I have now removed the empty files, so the report works.
But I wouldn't say it's useful.

cheers,
Derick

On 17.09.2024 at 17:06, Derick Rethans wrote:

On Mon, 9 Sep 2024, Christoph M. Becker wrote:

write-test.php is important, and <https://qa.php.net/phpt_details.php&gt;
maybe even more so. As this is relevant for run-tests.php (I don't
think there are still alternative test runners), php-src/docs seems to
be a good home for it.

I agree, it should go there. All the "read me" type docs are MD, but the
actual documentation in
php-src/docs/source at master · php/php-src · GitHub is (for good
reasons) in RST. I think it makes sense for the PHPT documentation
(write-test.php and phpt_details) to be a single ".md" in docs/ — one
explains the how and minimal how, whereas the latter is much more
detail).

I had already submitted PR #15939 before I read your reply, but I'm more
than fine going with PR #15940 instead.

handling-bugs.php needs a thorough overhaul, or might be dropped
altogether. Some of the quickfix snippets might still be useful for
the GH issue tracker, though.

I say we just drop it.

Okay.

The PFTT reports have always been pretty much useless.
<https://qa.php.net/reports/run_tests.php&gt; had some value, but
apparently the SQLite DB had been corrupted again, so this can
probably be removed as well. I believe the functionality to send
these reports has been dropped from run-tests.php quite a while ago
anyway.

I tried to see what was going on there, but on the command line, the
8.2.18 file is fine (there is a file for every version). It's just an
empty database and the "reports" table doesn't exist.

I have now removed the empty files, so the report works.
But I wouldn't say it's useful.

I agree that it is preferable to have users open tickets on GH about
failing tests; at least you can request feedback there.

Christoph