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Version: 5.3 (Upcoming)

Manual Testing

Testers are individuals who know how to use Joomla! and have some time available. Anyone can become a tester and test one or more pull requests within their level of expertise. There really is something for everyone!

Testing Environment

To get started you need an environment in which you can easily create multiple Joomla installations. This is because tests are often based on a specific branch, such as 5.2-dev, 5.3-dev or 6.0-dev. You could put different installations in subfolders with names such as jcms-test-52 or jcms-test-60 or whatever. This is a summary of what you need:

  • A laptop or desktop computer with a web server, database and PHP installed.
  • Git installed.
  • Node.js and npm installed.
  • Composer installed.
  • A GitHub account to obtain an API Token.
  • The latest Patchtester zip file. Select the Latest button from the Releases section on the right of the GitHub page. Save it for use multiple times.

You can do some testing using subfolders in a hosting account. It is just more convenient to do it locally.

Creating a Database

A reminder on how to create a MySQL database and user from the command line:

mysql -u root -p
CREATE DATABASE jcms_53;
CREATE USER 'jtester'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'strong_password';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON jcms_53.* TO 'jtester'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EXIT;

Test it:

mysql -u jtester -p -D jcms_53
strong_password
EXIT;

As you may be using this sequence often and you may want to script it, you could use an easy to remember password rather than a strong_password. The same user can be used for multiple test databases.

Installing Joomla

The normal method of installing Joomla! from a distribution package does not include the source CSS and JavaScript files that need to be recompiled to test any pull request that includes a change to either of these types of resource. So it is best to clone the joomla-cms repository and build a working installation by following the instructions in the README. In brief:

  • Select a branch as the instructions change slightly for each branch. Scroll down to the section headed Steps to setup the local environment:.
  • Change directory to the parent directory of your Joomla subfolders and use the following command.
    • git clone https://github.com/joomla/joomla-cms.git
  • Rename the newly created joomla-cms folder to a name to be used for testing, such as jcms-53, and cd into it.
    • mv joomla-cms jcms-53; cd jcms-53;
  • Checkout the branch you want to build. The git branch command will show only the default branch, which may not be the one you want to work on.
    • git checkout 5.3-dev
  • Install the Joomla dependencies:
    • composer install
  • Build the Joomla installation.
    • npm ci

The composer install and npm ci stages generate numerous lines of output including warnings. However, if they go to completion you can assume it is safe to point your browser at the subdirectory (localhost/jcms-53) and go ahead with the Joomla installation as for any normal installation.

Except: do not Remove "installation" folder at the last stage of installation. Do not Install Additional Languages at this stage as they may not be available for the selected Joomla version. Language installation is covered later.

Open Administrator

Login to the backend using the administrator credentials you set during the installation process. The Welcome to Joomla! guided tour should auto-start. You can take the tour, Cancel it or Hide Forever. As this is a test site it is probably best to select No to the Help us make Joomla! better! message.

In the title bar you will see the installed version, for example 5.3.0-alpha4-dev.

You might like to change some Global Configuration values. For example, a default list limit of 10 is probably enough for testing; and you might like to change the Session Lifetime to 60 minutes to give you more time to think.

Select the icon to Open the frontend of ... in a new window. to check the front end displays the Home page with a Main Menu and Login Form.

Problems

If anything goes wrong there are several options available:

  • Empty the database, delete the configuration.php file from the root of the site and do the Joomla installation again.
  • Empty the database and delete the folder used for this test site. Then go back to the clone stage described above.
  • Create a new database and new clone with new names.

Next

Ready for Testing with the Joomla! Patchtester.