[Python-Dev] Tracker test instances (was: My thinking about the development process)

[Nick Coghlan]

On 7 December 2014 at 02:11, R. David Murray <rdmurray at bitdance.com> wrote:
> For the tracker, being unable to run a test instance on Windows would
> likely not be a severe limitation.  Given how few Windows people we get
> making contributions to CPython, I'd really rather encourage them to
> work there, rather than on the tracker.  OS/X is a bit more problematic,
> but it sounds like it is also a bit more doable.
>
> On the other hand, what's the overhead on setting up to use Docker?  If
> that task is non-trivial, we're back to having a higher barrier to
> entry than running a dev-in-a-box script...
>
> Note also in thinking about setting up a test tracker instance we have
> an additional concern: it requires postgres, and needs either a copy of
> the full data set (which includes account data/passwords which would
> need to be creatively sanitized) or a fairly large test data set.  I'd
> prefer a sanitized copy of the real data.

If you're OK with git as an entry requirement, then something like the
OpenShift free tier may be a better place for test instances, rather
than local hosting - with an appropriate quickstart, creating your own
tracker instance can be a single click operation on a normal
hyperlink. That also has the advantage of making it easy to share
changes to demonstrate UI updates. (OpenShift doesn't support running
containers directly yet, but that capability is being worked on in the
upstream OpenShift Origin open source project)

Cheers,
Nick.

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia