Fediverse testsuite project funded

FYI: NLNet announced that it funded our project “Fediverse Test Suite” in its latest funding round. While there isn’t a ton of money given how much testing need there is in the fediverse, it certainly will help us make a big step forward. On their site: https://nlnet.nl/project/FediverseTestsuite/

Our plan is largely the same as what I presented back in August to SWICG. Slides and the more detailed tech description are at: https://github.com/fediverse-devnet/testsuite

People involved are still the same (see slides), plus we’ve been reaching out to various other projects who have said they would integrate their apps so they can be tested, too. We do want to create not just a technical test suite, but to the extent possible, use this as a community barn raising effort in which we collectively raise the quality of interop for as many apps across the fediverse as possible for the benefits of its users today and tomorrow — and of course to make it easier for developers to test their apps against other apps. There are still a few line items in the project budget that haven’t been allocated to people/projects yet, and which hopefully can help us move this along. Which other projects will do exactly what will have to be seen, in practice, because obviously we first need to produce something that is actually useful :-) and I don’t want to put anybody on the spot before that :-)

(If you think you have a project that might benefit from a test suite, and we haven’t talked yet, please get in touch with me off-list. If you like to help, please do, too.)

Next steps:

* Still need to sign some paperwork with NLNet

* Then, first step is to create a "demonstratable preview" of a minimally functioning setup and with it, run a couple of simple tests against Mastodon. This should be documented enough that friendly others can run it, too. This first step is just intended to be a "tech preview" and not be very useful on its own yet.

* Do a community meeting with show-and-tell for feedback. We are aiming for towards the end of January.

Then gradually and iteratively flesh out the preview into something real, integrate apps, and grow the list of test cases, on something like a monthly cycle, until the funded part of the project ends some time in the summer.

Happy to answer questions — with the caveat that not all questions have answers yet before we get into the thick of it.

Cheers,



Johannes.


Johannes Ernst
j12t.org <https://j12t.org/>