[techtalk] Testing (Was: Re: Technical issues)

[Laurel Fan]

Excerpts from linuxchix: 21-Nov-100 [techtalk] Re: Technical is.. by
jenn at simegen.com 
> And not just free of known bugs, but tested well.

So, how do you test well?  What testing procedures and methodolgies
should be used?  And how can adequate coverage be ensured?

Scenario: You are designing a test plan for a small to medium sized
(say, 5 core developers, 20,000 lines of code) open source/free
software project.  All of your fellow developers recognize the wisdom
of testing, but some have no experience in more formal (meaning
'organized', not necessarily proofs of correctness) testing.  The
project is written in C++, and makes extensive use of external
libraries (in C and C++).  The application has a gui, and has a
network component talking a well documented, standard protocol.  You
are roughly in the beta stage, and your project is used by a few
hundred people.

What factors would you take into consideration, and what
would your plan look like?