R project testers - how to help out

We have a 4-week alpha/beta/RC period every 6 months for testing 
before a 2.x.0 release.  This is announced here, and we get very 
little response.  I expect the testing window for R 2.13.0 to be 
Mar-Apr.

That said, we do quite extensive testing on the main platforms (ix86 
and x86_64 Linux, i386 and x64 Windows) and slightly less on ix86 Mac 
OS X, x86 Solaris and Sparc Solaris.  This includes very frequent 
automated runs over all available R packages.  And we do also make 
daily snapshots available for testing.

R itself comes with a quite extensive test suite, and tools for 
testing packages.  Some people have chosen to use particular 
unit-testing frameworks (such as package RUnits), but these are 
notorious for obfuscating problems to the extent that the public 
output from the check farms contains almost no clue as to the specific 
test failure.

I hope that is enough background for you to explore the status quo and 
come with specific proposals.  Thank you for your offer of help.

I just want to find out how I could help out with testing on the R 
project. I have many years of software development as well as QA and 
test of everything from chips to supercomputers and really enjoy 
testing.  Increasingly, I am working in data mining and large-scale 
statistical kinds of things and "R" is my tool of choice.

Any help is much appreciated.

James Goss
Los Angeles, CA

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Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
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Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595