PE>> so is Christmas a good time to do your own testing on PQWK so that
PE>> you can be happy that it is operating properly and then switch to it?

RS> Dunno. What I was planning to do was a complete redo of the
RS> whole operation at my end, mainly to make it a lot safer and
RS> completely fail safe. Thats obviously a rather bigger job and
RS> I havent basically done anything much except think about it.

PE> Yes I am well aware of the fact that you could spend several
PE> man-months improving it if you wanted to, I was just suggesting
PE> sticking PQWK222 into your existing setup so that everyone was
PE> using this version.

Yes, I am well aware that you have this rather casual approach to
actually testing new releases, I dont do it like that on stuff which
matters to me. As that very delayed identification of a problem with
the pre 2.21 showed, its very easy for warts to slip thru.

PE> After you have done some testing of your own (just on PQWK222).

But if I am going to do it a proper system for checking on how well a
new release works, it makes more sense to do that and not fart around
for a particular one. Particularly as the farting around is the vast
bulk of what would be done for a proper check anyway.

PE> Bear in mind that echomail is fairly well tested by the use of others,

Didnt stop the pre 2.21 not being noticed. And the fundamental problem
with outgoing email is that most of the time it doesnt fail safe anyway,
you often wouldnt know if it had warts. The only thing you are likely
to detect is something drastic which say loses most of the outgoing
netmail.

PE> and netmail can only be well tested if people get responses from
PE> netmail they have sent to other zones, within Australia, and within
PE> this board.

Even thats not strictly true. If there had been a fully auto check
of the new release, it would have picked up that attempt at fixing
international netmail breaking the same zone netmail, coz those would
be different with the two releases.

PE> I can't answer on the netmail, it has to come from other users.

Nope, you can check for example that the netmail in the zone hasnt got
mangled by the new code.

There are other obvious checks that can be done on other stuff too.
For example if you have a totally separate process which just counts
the mail in the incoming PKTs, and the processing of the PKTs to QWKs
also counts the messages, if they dont match, you clearly have lost
some somewhere.

--- PQWK202