[Members] interop testing
Dave Cridland
dave at cridland.net
Tue Nov 2 05:45:56 CST 2010
On Sat Oct 30 14:17:05 2010, Peter Saint-Andre wrote:
> I think it would be good to start preparing better for interop
> testing
> at XSF events. I'm fine at leading discussions about specs, but I'm
> not
> a developer so I don't know quite what we need here. What do you
> folks
> think? How can the XSF help in terms of process and infrastructure?
On this note...
I'd like to propose that the XSF arranges regular interop events to
test and publicly demonstrate interoperability across a range of
functionality.
Various other organizations are doing the same, at the moment, and
these are only involving a small cross-section of the implementations
- generally those focussed on a particular industry sector. This
might cause a somewhat skewed viewpoint on just how good
interoperability *is* in XMPP - I've always assumed it to be
excellent, but involvement with some of these specialist events has
shaken my confidence, and not done XMPP itself any favours.
Therefore, I'm proposing that the XSF should organize an event prior
to this; this suggests rather strongly that the event should be
conducted online. The things I'd like to concentrate on are the
basics - S2S and C2S authentication/security, and MUC. (Yes, this
does imply existing implementations failed to interop even here, much
to my surprise).
In particular:
- TLS/X.509 authentication for S2S.
- SCRAM (including, ideally, -PLUS) for C2S.
- Joining local and remote chatrooms.
I also think we could do more, but I'd ideally like to conentrate on
just this. Other technologies seem to be easier to do interop testing
in somewhat less formal ways, in part because the implementation
pools are often smaller.
I'm suggesting the first week of December - that is, Monday 6th
through to Saturday 11th, inclusive.
The way I see it operating is as follows:
1) The XSF sets up a test DNS zone, containing domains for each
implementation taking part (this might well be more than one - in
Isode's case, I think we'd be likely to put in our current release as
well as the forthcoming one).
2) Participants can arrange times to perform testing. Participants
will provide each other with transcripts as needed. Server
implementations would be online continuously for the week; the
arrangement of times is for the "staff".
3) Two temporary teams need to be formed by the XSF. One
administrative, to organize resources such as the DNS, chatrooms,
mailing lists, etc. One technical, for arbitration if we actually get
an interop failure (and writing up what the correct reading and/or
fix the specifications need).
4) The XSF will need to operate a CA for the event. Whilst I've not
confirmed this, I think Isode can provide (at least one) copy of our
CA software to the XSF for this purpose, which would give somebody a
simple (ie, GUI clicky) way of generating X.509 certificates with
various combinations of Subject RDNs and Subject Alternative Names.
So, questions:
a) Are sufficient numbers of members interested in this?
b) Are sufficient number of implementors able to commit? (I know many
aren't members, but if we can generate a critical mass here, we
should be fine in attracting more).
c) Is the Board (presumably) interested in overseeing the
organization?
Dave.
--
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