Is it time to stop adding features to soaring software? Is it timeto focus on reliability?

We made unit tests to check complicated stuff like OLC realtime
calculations, FAI triangle calculations and such, in the development phase.
But generally I called "unit tests" the people doing individual checking of
each beta versions, and the experience shew that you need at least 300 of
them for 3 months to be relatively sure everything is ok. This is why I have
brought the beta phase to almost 12 months.
One way or another, you still need beta testing because obvious problems are
easy to fix, while the nasty stuff is always obfuscated and for Murphy's
laws will pass all unit tests, because tests did not consider the problem
(otherwise, you would have fixed it already).
Best would be to have both, of course. Xcsoar and LK can have hundreds of
betatesters, and dozens of eyes checking at the code and spotting problems.
But in the end, people doing debugging are just a few around the world, for
both projects. You can count people doing this work on xcsoar and lk8000
with fingers of one hand.




"Tobias Bieniek" wrote in message
...

We're all using our free time in a way which makes sense and fun. Finding
bugs, correcting them and even rewriting code just because once in the
past we took some shortcuts and now we're seeing the unwanted effects is
not fun.

Well... actually... I've been doing exactly that for three years on the
XCSoar project now and let me tell you that this can be fun too. For me it
was a learning experience that ultimately got me my current job and a few
other things before that.

and @Paolo: why do you have unit tests if you don't even trust them?