Everything

php

Discontinuing qa.php.net

php.internals

Derick Rethans

1 year ago

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
(https://qa.php.net/write-test.php), and how to handle bug reports
(https://qa.php.net/handling-bugs.php); which should be integrated in
wherever we now have internals documentation — please advise where
that should go.

- Some goals of the QA team (https://qa.php.net/projects.php), which we
can probably remove.

- The latest QA releases (https://qa.php.net/), with SHAs; this should
be merged with https://www.php.net/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: https://qa.php.net/pftt.php — 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

Christoph Becker

1 year ago

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
>   (https://qa.php.net/write-test.php), and how to handle bug reports
>   (https://qa.php.net/handling-bugs.php); 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>
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: https://qa.php.net/pftt.php — 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> 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

Derick Rethans

1 year ago

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
> >   (https://qa.php.net/write-test.php), and how to handle bug reports
> >   (https://qa.php.net/handling-bugs.php); 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>
> 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
https://github.com/php/php-src/tree/master/docs/source 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: https://qa.php.net/pftt.php — 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> 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

Christoph Becker

1 year ago

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>
>> 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
> https://github.com/php/php-src/tree/master/docs/source 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> 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

Bilge

1 year ago

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:
>
> - Documentation on how to write tests
>   (https://qa.php.net/write-test.php), and how to handle bug reports
>   (https://qa.php.net/handling-bugs.php); which should be integrated in
>   wherever we now have internals documentation — please advise where
>   that should go.
>
> - Some goals of the QA team (https://qa.php.net/projects.php), which we
>   can probably remove.
>
> - The latest QA releases (https://qa.php.net/), with SHAs; this should
>   be merged with https://www.php.net/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: https://qa.php.net/pftt.php — 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

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

Christoph Becker

1 year ago

On 09.09.2024 at 22:50, Bilge wrote:

> 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.

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

Rowan Tommins [IMSoP]

1 year ago

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]