Rocky Linux is pleased to announce Testrarc

Key points

Rocky Linux has launched Testrarc (TEST tRAcking for Rocky Candidates), a web platform for managing and following the testing of each Rocky Linux release. It replaces Mattermost Playbooks, which the project had used since 2022 to track tests, validations and contributions. The production instance is live, and results from the Rocky Linux 10.3 and 9.9 beta testing are already in it.

Why a new tool

• Every Rocky Linux release goes through several volunteer community teams that check and validate each release candidate.
• As requirements grew, the project needed more transparency and better management than Playbooks gave.
• The Testing team looked at what other Linux distributions use and took the ideas that suited Rocky Linux.

What Testrarc does

• It is an open source Python application built with the Rio web framework, working as a central dashboard for a release from pre-release or beta through each release candidate.
• It tracks every applicable test on all supported architectures: x86_64, aarch64, riscv64, ppc64le and s390x.
• For each test it records who validated it, the result (pass, fail or partial) and the environment (bare metal, KVM, container, VM or cloud).

How to take part

• No login is needed to see the testing status. Submitting a test requires a Rocky account, so each volunteer gets credit.
• Some tests need tools such as OpenQA or Sparrow/Sparky, but many can be done by anyone. A "community_testable" tag filter lists tests that need no special hardware, deep expertise or tooling.
• Feedback goes to the Testing Team channel on Mattermost; issues and code are on the project's Git page, and release criteria and test cases are on the Testing team's documentation page.

Credits

• Testrarc was developed by Bob Robison (@grayeul) and Howard Van Der Wal (@metalinux).
• Moving years of past practice and updating the release criteria and documentation involved the Release Engineering, Infrastructure, Testing and Documentation teams.

Summary by DistroNews, based on the original post.