Level 2: Smoke Testing (cont'd)

• Smoke testing: Pros

  • Fairly good testing of blead across Unixes

  • New testers have come forward since TPC::NA::2017

• Smoke testing: Cons

  • Very little testing of branches

    • At most one automated smoke rig set up for branches

  • Poor testing on Windows and Darwin; none on VMS

  • No one available to correct repeatedly failing tests on platforms like NetBSD

    • We cannot expect people who set up smoke testing rigs on non-Linux platforms to have debugging skills thereupon

  • Some smokers send reports to perl5-porters newsgroup/list

    • E.g., njh@bandsman.co.uk

    • IMO, not generally helpful unless we're actively debugging failures