[Rd] Alpha and Beta testing of R versions

[Simon Urbanek]

On Nov 4, 2005, at 6:58 AM, Prof Brian Ripley wrote:

> Martin's point is generally very valid, but in the case of the  
> 2.2.0 release remarkably few of the bugs found since release were  
> new in 2.2.0.
> One thing we have learnt is that none of the testers seem to look  
> at HTML help (which accounts for 2 of the 4 2.2.0-only bugs I  
> counted).
>
> What we need most is persistent help in testing each release,  
> especially on unusual platforms.  How do we `incentivize' that?

I suspect that in the particular case of OS X the problem was  
probably visibility - it was the first time ever that nightly OS X  
binaries were available during alpha/beta phase (afaict), but I'm not  
sure how many people knew about it. I think posted about it on R-SIG- 
Mac during some discussion, but maybe I should have announced it more  
specifically somewhere. I'm, not even sure whether there was a link  
from the main page on CRAN. I would think that OS X users are more  
likely to rely on binaries, so the above is more relevant than on  
other platforms.

>> - being listed as helpful person in R's 'THANKS' file
>>  {but that may not entice those who are already listed},
>>  or even in the NEWS of the new relase
>>  or on the "Hall of fame of R beta testers"

The latter sounds good to me, although I'm not sure how many of our  
users are striving for fame ;).

Cheers,
Simon