This article is a part of a series introducing what the Fedora Quality Assurance (QA) team is, what they do, and how you can get involved. If you’ve wanted to get involved with contributing to Fedora and testing is interesting to you, this series explains what it is and how you can get started.

This is the third and last part of the Getting started with Fedora QA series. In the last post, we talked about how to create your test environment and use Bodhi to test updates and leave feedback. This article will focus on running test cases and how to complete one.

What is a test case?

A test case is a set of scenarios related to common software combinations or situations. The cases have steps to follow and replicate to see if you have issues or errors. Once you complete a test case, you can give a +1 or -1 karma to the test case in Bodhi. Test cases are important steps in the quality assurance process and help cover important use cases of the operating system.

Nmap test case

Getting started with Fedora Quality Assurance (QA): Setup on the wiki pageAs an example, we’ll cover a test case for Nmap, a common piece of software in computing security. The following steps are the general order of operations for any test case, but this one looks specifically at Nmap.

  1. To begin, usually any test case will have a list of required packages on the wiki page for you to install. Check and make sure you have all the packages installed.
  2. Follow the steps outlined in the test case for what you need to do. In the case of Nmap, we run a few commands and try pulling up the front-end, Zenmap. I was able to open it and it performed as expected.
    1. One required test was to check if results would be successfully exported to a XML file.
  3. After completing the commands, steps, and other tests, you will be ready to send your results.
  4. Return to the Bodhi page for the test case and give +1 or -1 for the test cases.

Getting started with Fedora Quality Assurance (QA): Testing Nmap

Congratulations! After finishing these steps, you will have successfully completed your first test case.

Get in touch with QA

Come say hello to us! You can find the Quality Assurance team on their mailing list and you can also interact with the global community on IRC.

Debug courtesy of Lemon Liu, Crash Test Dummy courtesy of James Keuning (from the Noun Project)