Firefox Debug Test Plan - DRAFT -

Maintained by: Tomcat

• First Draft, 11/10/07

Overview

• Debug Builds are special Firefox Builds that have extended Features include and are able to display assertions and helpful to find memory leaks.

• Everyone can build a Debug Builds. The MDC (example link: http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Windows_Build_Prerequisites) provide some steps how to build Debug Builds.

• The Build Team also creates Debug Builds.

• Debug Builds are intendend for the everyday use. Debug Builds are even bigger then normal Release Builds or Nightly (like a Windows Debug Build needs around 110 MB Disk Space ).

QA Strategy

• Getting some Windows / Linux / Mac Debug Builds from Build
• Building a Tiger Team for the Debug Build (consisting of 1-2 QA Team Members, Tomcat & ? )
• QA will run a FFT during the Firefox 3 Beta Period with this Debug Builds for Memory Leaks
• QA file Bugs for this Memory Leaks and Assertions

• Additional Information from a mail from dbaron:

The reason they're so large (-g) is independent of the reason most people want them (-DDEBUG, plus a few other things like --enable-trace-malloc). You could do one without the other. (In fact, it's possible that the packaging code will automatically strip out the debug symbols.)

That said, having the debugging symbols is necessary if you're using nsTraceRefcnt or trace-malloc for more than summary statistics or leak detection. It might be necessary for distinguishing leak bugs, since the stack traces aren't so great without them.

Target

• Testing with Litmus testcases for Memory Leaks and Assertions
• Discovering of Memory Leaks and Assertions

Time Table

• QA will request Debug Builds from Build after Beta 1 is shipped to the Public
• QA will start testing and target is a FFT for each platform within 2-3 weeks (for each platform a week)