Reduced Test Cases

[Rob Weir <ro...@apache.org>]

It is good to understand the concept of a "reduced test case" when
reviewing bug reports.

A quick example.  Suppose you receive a bug report that
(hypothetically) says OpenOffice Calc crashes when doing the
following:

1) Start OpenOffice

2) Enter a date into cell A1

3) Add a chart to the 2nd sheet in the file.

4) Switch back the first sheet

5) Add the current time to the page header

5) Export to PDF and it crashes

This is typical of a report from a user, where they have taken care to
record exactly what they did.  But there is likely extraneous details
here, things that are not necessary to cause the crash.   When you
create a reduced test case, you start with the user-reported steps and
see if they can be reduced to the smallest possible set of steps.

For example, in this case you might try without a chart in step 3.
And try without entering the value in step 2.  If it still crashes
with the remaining steps, then you have a good reduced test case.
Our developers love reduced test cases, since it makes it allows them
to focus on the core of the issue.

Thanks!

-Rob