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Date: Wed, 01 Aug 2012 21:38:35 +1000
From: steve <steve@mistfpga.net>
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To: bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net, Bill Hees <billhees@gmail.com>
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Subject: [Bitcoin-development] The Bitcoin Testing Project
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Hi all,

I know most of you have more important things to do, and not enough
time as it is, but I would really like your feedback on the testing
project.

Bettermeans seemed ideal, it allowed for leaderless leadership with
people being able to dip in and out of what they wanted to do.
however it seems that bettermeans is in no way a finished product and
is rotting fast.

I would like to move away from bettermeans - whilst retaining the
voting and sub workstream style of working.  I would like to set
something up around MantisBT (Mantis Bug Tracker) - this is an
exceptionally versatile bit of software with plugins and interaction
with other testing products (everything from test setups and plans to
test runs and results) I would go as far as saying it is industry
standard (yeah, i know about bugzilla, etc. mantis beats them all
hands down.) obviously we would need a wiki and other software - this
is not a problem.

I am happpy to pay for the VPS' to host this stuff and set it all up.

I have quite a bit of experience with mantis and other opensource
testing stuff.

I see the testing of bitcoin to be very similar to the testing process
in the games industry.  for those that do not know how this works it
is like this:-

A company comes up with a device (xbox/ps),
They then publish a set of dos and donts for this device (TRC for sony
and TCRs for microsoft.  - I wrote quite a few of the MS TCR's for the
original xbox.)
They (ms/sony) then test your game against these rules and depending
on how many you pass/fail your game can be released or not.

I see this as mapping to bitcoin very well, the device is the
blockchain, and the TRC/TCR _tests_ are published so third party
developers can see how they fair [look at gavins recent blockchain
edge cases for an example] (ms/sony do not publish their testcases
only the requirements)

I believe that this will allow the bitcoin testing project to be able
to cope with the stable builds, bleeding edge builds and 3rd party
implementations all at the same time.

It doesnt matter what the app is, it is its interaction with the
blockchain, the safe guarding of the blockchain and compatibility with
the previous/future versions that are tested.

[for the bitcoin dev list]
A little about me:-
The below is more or less a cut and paste of some of the stuff I sent
gavin in my initial email about wanting to be in on the project.

I can back all of this up with references. I can go into more detail if
needed.

I was heavily involved with setting up the microsoft xbox european cert
department
I set up qa department for europes largest independant games developer
(although they are no longer)

worked for microsoft secure science designing security automation tools

setup the internal pentest for thales e-security (now TITS [Thales
Information Technology Solutions (or Trotters Independant Traders ;),
on thier datacryptors (fpga, crypto and product) - have done full test
cycles on hsm 8000, payshield 9000, dc2k and thier latest line of
military spec comms equipment.

Setup and pentested Thales and nCiphers credit control software (to
fips level 4 standard - This shit bitcoin exchanges need!! I know bank
is a dirty word in the bitcoin world, but we should be at least as
secure as them)

I currently find exploits in stuff like office, quicktime, ie, ff, etc
and sell them to companies like ZDI (3com) iDefense (verisgn) and some
pentest companies that require zero day exploits.

however I would like to ditch this and get my bitcoin related stuff
off the ground - with the BTP being top of the list.

my spelling is rubbish, and sometimes i forget to spellcheck before i
hit send. sorry about that.

any feedback would be really appreciated. please! I feel that this has
stagnated enough and I want to get my work out there and I want it to
be useful. (I lost 60 or so testcases because Kev left himself logged
into bettermeans and I added them under his account... none appeared
on the wiki, none appeared anywhere...)

There is already lots of stuff on the wiki that outlines how i see
things holding together - but you cant see who posted what because of
a bug that has appeared recently [meta info is just displayed as its
meta tag, {name} on {date} wrote.]

as apposed to Mistfpga on 30/8/2012 wrote...

so the tl;dr
1 - I want to use something other than bettermeans
2 - I can admin opensource software to do the same
3 - I want to take the voting/hiearachy style from bettermeans and
apply it to mantis and test workflow.
4 - I want to get some testing done asap.
5 - I have a full msdn and technet licence
6 - I have a vast array of machines [nearly 100 cores] that I can use
to automate testing and to test different setups.
7 - been mining for 18 months or so.

cheers,

steve

I do not belive this to be related, but I am not ashamed and feel no
stigma. I have posted this on a public forum. I suffer from fast
cycling (withing a day) type two bipolar disorder.  This has been and
is being managed very well by my meds (300mg quetiapine fumerate and
30mg mirtrazipine at night) I have been well for over a year now. [and
yes, even with these mental health problems I still hold SCE clearance]

- -- 
my PGP public key is at pgp.mit.edu id: 0x5016FB50

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