# Cabal is looking for QA testers on the Windows platform

Hi everyone,

The Cabal development community is sending a call for participation in our quality assurance (QA) programme. We are looking to improve the quality of the software we ship on the Windows platform. This is a continuous and incremental process, and this where you (yes, you!) can shine.

The reason for this call is that many of Cabal's PRs cannot be properly tested in predictable and clean GitHub runners. This challenge is exacerbated by a lack of Windows users. As a result, we are looking for people with access to Windows machines and willing to test the nightly releases of Cabal on real-world code bases. We hope to get bug reports out of this process and improve the Cabal user experience on Windows.

The concrete approch we propose is based on a dedicated GitHub project. In particular, contributors put notes for the QA team in tickets and PRs. These items are then automatically collected in a place where you can see what needs testing: https://github.com/orgs/haskell/projects/3.

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The whole process is facilitated by the [nightly builds](https://github.com/haskell/cabal#ways-to-get-the-cabal-install-binary) of `cabal-install` that we provide. So, you don't have to compile the tool yourself to get the latest features that need testing.

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The tangible benefits for you are numerous. To name a few:
- understanding Cabal better and learn new things about it;
- getting to know yet-unreleased Cabal features that are just around the corner, and getting ready to use those features before the public even aware;
- maybe getting into the actual Cabal development.

Contact links for those interested in getting involved:
- [Matrix](https://app.element.io/#/room/#hackage:matrix.org),
- [email](https://mail.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/cabal-devel),
- [official Cabal repository](https://github.com/haskell/cabal).