[LDTP-Dev] Creating a common place to discuss automated GUI testing

[David Malcolm]

We spent much time at the Boston GNOME Summit discussing LDTP and
Dogtail, approaches to automated testing using accessibility, and
testing of accessibility.

Many in the wider conference outside of our meetings expressed the
opinion that automated test suites should live inside the modules they
test in CVS, but that no-one outside of the two testing projects
understands the differences between them - and that this division means
that no-one goes and writes/maintains the tests.

In our meeting we came up with a proposal to create a mailing alias that
would cover the LDTP development list, the Dogtail development list, and
the other people present in the meeting.

At the wrap-up session, Jeff Waugh argued that it was a much better idea
to simply create a new mailing list, since mailing aliases are a pain to
maintain, and simply freeze the politics at a particular snapshot in
time.  I think he convinced me, and convinced those of the group who
were present at the wrap-up.

So my revised proposal is to create a new mailing list:
"automation at gnome.org" (which was what we were going to call the alias),
with description "Automated testing of GNOME and beyond", and that we
use this list as a neutral ground between the two frameworks where we
can organize/help/lobby for the creation of tests that can live inside
the modules they test, ideally unify around the best parts of each
framework, and get the build-brigade to run these tests - basically any
kind of discussion that improves the testability of GNOME (and e.g.
OpenOffice, Firefox etc)

Is this acceptable to everyone?

How should we involve the ldtp-dev and dogtail-devel lists?  Can we
subscribe one list to another? (does this work?)  Or simply ask everyone
to subscribe to this new list, and to use it as appropriate.

I'll try to get the new list created shortly, assuming no-one points out
any major flaws with this plan; I'll sent an announcement as a followup
when this happens.

Thoughts?
Dave