I strongly support the idea of a test farm. The CVS repository
should remain under tight control, because the quality of the
code base is crucial to the success of ecos. Although I tested
patches I very much dislike the idea of checking them into
the repository without them having been reviewed by others
independently.
Indeed that is one of the reasons for delays in patch approval. All
patches are reviewed by hand. And indeed patches rarely get checked in
unmodified. Due to lack of hardware availability, they are not likely to
be tested unless the reviewer does possess the hardware.