Weekly Update.

Here we are..it’s passed almost a month from the beginning of my OPW internship and this week we have had our first OPW meeting on GNOME #opw channel on IRC. We have had the chance to introduce ourself to the community and to the other women. Each of us has reported the efforts, the goals and the work made until now :). It has been a useful way to connect each other and write about our experience. I wanna really thanks all the moderators that are making this possible 🙂

Now coming back to my weekly work…

QA Activity

This weeks I’ve worked on bug triaging, I took part at

  • Testday and Triaging: Firefox 23 Beta 7 testday and Unconfimed bug Triage. This week I’ve also started collecting all the info and useful links to triage on Windows, that is not my mainly platform. I’ve noticed that my experience on windows triaging is in inverse proportion to the percentage of bug filled for Firefox on Window. So this week I’ve started collecting info and useful links to triage on Windows,too. On our bugmasters mailing list I’ve created a post ad hoc to collect opinions, suggestions and info about that. Feel free to take part in the topic. This week there has been the SUMO Bug Day. I’ve looked at Question component of bug of support.mozilla.org product.
    readme_triaging
  • Triaging Training Montage: Keeping on working on the idea of One bugzilla per child this week I’ve created a content mission for bug triage. My mentor told me about a useful tool created by Josh Matthews and using his project as starting point I’ve created one for bugmasters and other community members,too. The source code is available on github while an initial deployed version is on my site reachable at this address. A linear and simplified diagram of the triaging process is the  one on the right side.

Here there is a report of my activities listing the triage work done during last week.

Developer Activity

This week I’ve implemented some queries in my Bugmasters Extension based on the projects listed in the Bugmasters Project Page. I’ve added some queries with the number of bugs  for each one. Some screenshots of the addon is here built until now. The select drop down menu contains other useful option to search for specific bugs based on the mail user

Select options

Bugmaster Addon

Weekly Update

My OPW internship with Mozilla is going on. I’ve started my weekly meetings with my mentor, and I  hope I’ll improve my English communication skills, as well. 😀

QA Activity

This weeks I’ve worked on bug triaging, I took part at the

I’ve also decided to learn more about Bugzilla and bug’s lifecycle. As for what I think the first important thing to do when approaching Bugzilla and Triaging and, goal of my  work as bug wrangler as well, is understand:

  1. the tool you are using and how you can improve other to better and quickly learn it;I’ve started learning more about Bugzilla, reading docs, wiki, asking for info on IRC :). Under the idea of my mentor I’ve begun by sketching some ideas for One bugzilla per Child project, a project to set up training missions for new bugzilla.mozilla.org users. I’ve started exploring technologies and contents to add for some training missions about basic bugzilla use, and bug triage.
  2. how you can improve triaging work and let other approach to do the same. I’ve started exploring bugzilla query searches, reporters and developers activities; I’ve looked at a lot of bugs and read comments, whiteboard flags, looked at bug’s reporting dates, bug’s modification dates, time within which reporters are available to answer and add more info to the bugs, and I’ve estimated that there is a range of bugs, Middle-aged Bugs, that haven’t been changed recently, but were reported within the last 6 months. Triaging them may find good, relevant bugs. It can also help clear out invalid bugs! During these weeks I’ve focused my attentions on these bugs, starting from an initial set of bugs around 405, and I’ve started triaging them. I’ve also worked on how to generalize some simple steps to follow for triaging these bugs and help other approaching this Bugmaster Project and the result is here. After two weeks the number of bugs is decreased to 380 ( some of them are now resolved as INVALID,INCOMPLETE or WORKSFORME, other bugs are now NEW and a lot of others bugs are still waiting for replay from the reporter of needs-replication).

Here there is a report of my activities listing the triage work done during last week.

Developer Activity

This week I’ve started implementing some initial queries for my Bugmater extension:

  • I’ve created an online version of the addon that can be quickly test and installed,
  • I’ve set up initial Bugzilla queries to search for user created bugs, user assigned bugs and bugs where a user is qa contact and user info.
  • I’ve explored other possible queries for better supporting bugmasters works.

Where it has begun…quality assurance testing

Everyone who has surfed Mozilla website perhaps has seen a link that says: Get Involved. This is the simplest way to start helping, to get all the info and the opportunity to find out what you want to help with. This has been my starting point,too. I choose Quality Assurance and, in particular, Desktop Firefox Team. This team is focused on desktop Firefox testing for upcoming major releases and maintenance releases.

Anyway, the first steps to follow starting with Quality Assurance are:

  • Set up a Bugzilla account
  • Visit the mozilla wiki for how to help, work on some community tasks listed here
  • Join IRC on #qa on irc.mozilla.org or other relevant channels. You’ll find other community members, people who will be happy to answer your question and help you.

Some of the first activity to do are :

  • Come out to a Testday  joining IRC channel at #testday. More information can be found on the QMO Calendar
  • Running developmental builds of Firefox or one of the Firefox channels builds
  • Try to Confirm Unconfirmed bugs or Confirm bugs that are marked as fixed and comment the bug to say they are verified. More info are available in the Bugmasters Projects wiki page.  When you have already confirmed 3 or 4 bugs ask for canconfirm or editbug privileges on IRC or follow the indications listed here.
  • File bugs to help us improve the product (Some guideline to learn how to file bugs are available here).

More info are available in the doc section Here there are all the info about Events, TestDays, Bugzilla…every thing can help you starting.

First Week in OPW

Last week I’ve started my internship for the OPW with Mozilla. My main goal for the internship is to work as Bug Wrangler; What I need to do is helping the Bugmasters community with bug management and triaging under the supervision of Liz Henry, my mentor. Another of my goals is developing a Firefox Addon addressed to QA people, an instrument for helping users of Bugzilla and Mozilla through simple and immediate searches.

QA Activity

This week I’ve focused on bug triaging, I took part at the

  • Unconfirmed Bugs Triage Testday : I have explored the last week filed bugs, tried  to understand them, I’ve completed them with the required info and details, asked questions to the reporter, added testcase, reproduced and assigned them to the right component/product;
  • Partially worked on the mentored bug as explained in Mentored Bugs; I’ve tried to understand if old [good first bug] were still valid or under work of their assignee.
  • WebRTC in Firefox for Android and Firefox for desktop Testday: a testday aimed to support testing the new developer-release versions of Firefox for Android and Firefox on Desktop focusing on the process of discovering, using and testing WebRTC using demo pages and exploratory tests as listed in the testday etherpad

Here there is a report of my activities listing the triage work done, a new filed bug after a crash report, new mentors assigned to old [good first bugs].

Developer Activity

This week I’ve started creating a small sets of functional requirements for my extension. It’s an integration between Bugzilla and Mozilla and so I’ve started exploring

  • Firefox addon-sdk I’ve chosen to develop my Firefox extension
  • Bugzilla WebService and methods exposed to interact with
  • setted up a githup repository with an initial commit of my work until now with a small, initial and test sets of features

During all the week I’ve been on IRC trying to help during and off the testdays to help people approaching QA activities, hoping to be of help for other people like when I started and this work makes me very proud. 🙂

OPW…what is this?

I’ve started this blog talking abut the OPW, Mozilla and the internship I’ll begin soon. But…OPW…What is this?
OPW Poster
OPW stands for Outreach Program For Women and, as the name may imply, it’s a program aimed to provide tech internships to women organized by GNOME Foundation and inspired by Google Summer of Code. This program aims to encourage women to take part in FOSS projects guiding them through their first contributions. It first started with a round in 2006 with the GNOME Foundation, and then resumed in 2010 with editions organized every half a year. Now many other FOSS organizations have joined the program.

Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) is software that gives the user the freedom to use, copy, study, change, and improve it. There are many Free and Open Source Software licenses under which software can be released with these freedoms. FOSS contributors believe that this is the best way to develop software because it benefits society, creates a fun collaborative community around a project, and allows anyone to make innovative changes that reach many people. FOSS contributors do various things: software development, system administration, user interface design, graphic design, documentation, community management, marketing, identifying issues and reporting bugs, helping users, event organization, and translations.[source]

Among the participating organizazions of this round there is Mozilla and this is the organization I’ve applied for.
I’ve always thought that FOSS projects were something for an elite of people: a closed world, difficult to approach. It’s nice to see that OPW has already proved me wrong: I come closer and closer to a community of triagers, developers and users spread throughout the world. I can be part of something, and this will certainly make me a better person on both the personal and professional side.

This world needs human beings, all gender of human beings not only men 🙂

Outreach Program for Women

Here I’m. I’m a GNOME’s Outreach Program for Women intern.
A few months ago searching for new boosts, something new and different to get involved with, compared to what I usually do, I’ve started approaching  Mozilla QA project.
The idea to be involved in an Open Source project is a challenge for me something I didn’t really thought about 🙂 and now here I’m, I’ve been chosen from Mozilla
It’s amazing, everything is new for me but I’m looking forward to start working.