How to handle regressions

...

Suggesting that users should have to pay large sums of money to fix
major REGRESSIVE bugs is tantamount to EXTORTION.

No one suggested that users should have to pay. But it might be interesting for a certain user to get a bug/feature/regression fixed ASAP and therefore having the option is in my view great.

A regression should be dealt with, and in your case it has, just not fast enough for you - but that is live.

If I where you I would just test the proposed fix in the daily build to make sure it is fixed the way you expect it to get fixed.

Werner

The real extortion here is someone who expects people to work for his
own needs for free.

I am *not* talking about enhancement/feature requests, I am talking
about a major regression that should have never even made it into a
release build (in other words, it should have been caught/fixed in
rudimentary testing),

Also, as I have said more than once - and even created an enhancement
request for it -

There is simply no - zero - reason to:

1. have not provided the ability to fall back to the old behavior when
this very new, very different (to the old way) feature was implemented,
*especially* considering that the old behavior is obviously still there
(since you can still invoke it with CTRL-SHIFT-F9), or even more
inexplicable,

2. *immediately* re-introduce the old behavior - at the very least as an
*option* - once this bug was detected - until it could be properly
addressed, as I requested (again, once I became aware of the issue) here:

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=79877

Note that the patch already exists, but that you were not proactive in
even calling attention on the issue.

That is because, as I said:

1. There was basically no notice that such a major change was pending
(I've been on the libreoffice users list since it was created, and the
openoffice list for years prior to that),

2. As a one man shop, my time is limited, so my habits with respect to
testing new Libreoffice builds were to wait until the next major version
is at least at a .2 or .3 version,

3. It is impossible to test every single feature, as evidenced by the
actual devs who implemented this new feature/change who failed to even
TEST the very BASIC paste functionality (as evidenced by the fact that
the bug exists).

As soon as I encountered it (when the first user I had updated reported
it to me), I discovered the already opened bug (then subsequently
created the 'enhancement' request referenced above to re-enable, as an
option, the old behavior).

This seems to suggest that the situation your company is on with
respect to your LibreOffice deployment is not really problematic.

It is, but there is simply nothing we can do about it.

If you are not ready to pay anything to have someone fix your
problem,

Whose problem? First, this is Libreoffice's problem. Second, I am not
the decision maker for things like this for our company. I am simply an
IT guy. If you must know, if this were my company, I would be supporting
numerous open source projects financially, but again - it is not my
decision, and so I have to work with what I have, and since I am not
independently wealthy, I am unable to pay for things like this out of my
own pocket.

But that is all nothing to do with the fact that the responsibility for
fixing REGRESSIONS should fall on the dev(s) that introduced them, and
in fact this responsibility should be a part of any agreement they are
subject to when formally accepted as dev contributors.

Likewise, the responsibility for properly testing major new features is
- or should be - again, first and foremost on the dev(s) dong the work,
and only secondarily on the users.

If you are seriously suggesting otherwise (and I don't think you are, so
the following shouldn't apply to you), then you are nuts.

and don't even show up to call for an integration of the patch as
soon as possible,

I called for it as soon as I became aware it was there.

But, the point is, it should, again, be first on the dev(s) who
introduce the regression to push the patch(es).

Stick with 4.1.6 (that actually works).

It works really well, with an important vulnerability left unpatched.
That seems to be not important to you either:
http://www.libreoffice.org/about-us/security/advisories/

It is, but again - we are in the position of being forced to choose
between a rock and a hard place.

I guess everyone has his or her own priorities, but if anything happens
because of that, you will have been warned.

Yeah, thanks for ... nothing...

Please refrain from posting falsehoods (you don't have a clue what I am
or have been doing).

The point, again, is it is irrelevant if there is a TEST BUILD that is
fixed. The point is we are and have been stuck on an old unsupported
build precisely because of the dev(s) refusal to fix a major regression,
when there is a perfectly acceptable workaround that could be
implemented with very little code and risk (provide option to re-enable
the old behavior) that has been completely ignored for months.

@Charles, *,

Please would you verify that Jan-Marek's patch to Allow pasting into input
fields
<http://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core/commit/?id=3f26ab24e0bfd27645c97ff7915fba2db409930a>
(comment 13 on fdo#76565
<https://www.libreoffice.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=76565> ) fully
resolves the UX regression introduced with changes to the In-line fields.

Grab a build of master from
http://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/master/Win-x86@39/ and do an MSI
administrative install with modification of the bootstrap.ini file to run it
in parallel to your production build. See these instructions:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Installing_in_parallel

Then post a note to the fdo#76565 issue if all is good in resolving the
regression, and that a backport would be very helpful. Or, if UX issue
remains--what still needs to be changed.

Simply done, and moves the process along.

Stuart

Hi Tom,

Hi :slight_smile:
Yeh, it's good to know when a bug patch is released. It's a bit complicated for most normal users to test it though so it's even better to know when the patch is in a main release. I thought bug-tracker did that already but i can imagine why such notifications might be easily missed in some cases.

"Most normal users" will unfortunately have to be more patient until their pet bug gets fixed. Or have to take some interest in helping the community and learn/find out how to install a daily build onto a non critical/test machine and help pushing the fix for the pet bug forward.

Werner

No one suggested that users should have to pay.

You obviously haven't read this entire thread. Florian is trying to
extort money from me to fix this major regression.

But it might be interesting for a certain user to get a
bug/feature/regression fixed ASAP and therefore having the option is
in my view great.

As I said - suggesting a user pay for enhancements is one thing, and one
I agree wholeheartedly with.

Major regressions, on the other hand, are a very different issue, and
your lumping them together is just plain disingenuous.

A regression should be dealt with, and in your case it has, just not
fast enough for you - but that is live.

Yep... and the consequences, in this case, are that my biggest client is
seriously considering switching to Microsoft office, and because of the
situation, caused purely by the Libreoffice devs refusal to fix the
regression in a timely fashion, I have little ammunition to counter the
push. I know no one here truly cares, but I do, and this is in fact the
only reason I'm discussing this right now - meaning, I'm not a troll,
I'm not here to just diss you guys or anything, I have what I consider
to be very legitimate complaints about the way that this particular
regression has, and is being, handled, and believe that (most of) the
comments attempting to blame *me* for not 'ponying up' are irrelevant,
invalid, and in some cases, extremely objectionable (see the paragraph
following the next sentence as to why I take it as far as 'objectionable').

Obviously, some of the volunteers here disagree, but on that note...

I am also very aware that a very good number of the actual Libreoffice
developers are paid to work on it (some full, some part) time, so it
isn't like Libreoffice is a *purely* volunteer effort. In fact, it is,
most likely, much too big of a project to survive on a purely volunteer
basis, so please stop talking as if this were the case - it isn't.

If I where you I would just test the proposed fix in the daily build to
make sure it is fixed the way you expect it to get fixed.

Oh, I will be doing this as soon as time permits, but for the last 3
weeks, my plate has been full, and again, since I reverted to 4.1.6 way
back when, the bug hasn't on the front burner.

Thanks Stuart,

I will do this asap - but most likely won't have time until this weekend.

That said - it is a simple test - either you can paste into Input
Fields, or you can't.

So, yes, I will confirm this at the latest this weekend.

Thanks for the links, I'll bookmark them for future reference (I'm not
going anywhere, I'll probably never switch from Libreoffice for my
personal use and/or my personal company's use)...

"Most normal users" will unfortunately have to be more patient until
their pet bug gets fixed.

Maybe english isn't your first language, and you don't realize how
condescending your comments are?

This isn't *just* 'someone's pet bug'. This is a major regression that:

a) should have never happened in the first place

(copy/paste testing should have been among the very first tests the
dev(s) coding this major new change/feature performed)

and

b) since the new feature was replacing a fundamental, well established
behavior, the old functionality should have been kept in place as a user
configurable option for at *least* the lifetime of one full major
release, if not permanently (I would vote for permanently, because I
prefer the old pop-up way, as do many of the Libreoffice users I've
discussed this with, which is more than 100).

Or have to take some interest in helping the
community and learn/find out how to install a daily build onto a non
critical/test machine and help pushing the fix for the pet bug forward.

<sigh>

Again, sometimes people don't have time to do this for every single
release, especially when major feature changes are not pre-announced,
with calls for testing.

Again, sch major changes should *always* provide for a fallback to the
old way, at least until the new way is stable.

Anything else is just begging for ... well, threads like this one.

I have helped in every way that I can.

1. I am not a coder, so I cannot fix it myself,

2. I am not independently wealthy, and my boss won't pay for this kind
of stuff, so I cannot pay for bug fixes,

3. I participated in the process as soon as I became aware of the
regression, including creating an 'enhancement request' that should be
extremely trivial to implement (because the functionality/behavior,
invokable by CTRL-SHIFT-F9 is still there) to workaround the major
regression that has been totally ignored (and one that I would dearly
love to see made permanent), and lastly,

4. I don't think that being asked to pay for fixing major regressions is
even remotely reasonable, *especially* when a workaround/fix (to
reintroduce the old behavior at least as a workaround until the bug is
fixed, if not simply as a permanent option) is available - and I
consider anyone who suggests with a straight face that I should have to
pay $4,000+ to get it fixed as an extortionist.

I didn't file it (it was already filed), but it is:

https://www.libreoffice.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=76565

Have you tested the daily build which included the patch committed on
2014-8-17?

Irrelevant.

???
What you are responsible for 60+ PC's and you are not willing to test on
a test PC a potential fix to a problem which is serious to you?

I didn't say I wasn't willing, or even hadn't. I said it is irrelevant
to the fact that this massively major regression has caused us to be
unable to update past the 4.1.x series, ie, for the last two MAJOR
version releases.

As I said: I cannot install 'Daily builds' on 60+ PCs.

To the one who suggested that it is on us users to 'prod the devs to do
the back-porting'... seriously? Really? PLONK

I guess that is your reaction to someone not agreeing with you,

No, it is my reaction to someone who suggests something that is
ludicrous on its face.

That said, maybe you didn't mean it as it sounded, so I'll give you the
benefit of the doubt...

I think everything has been said that needs to be said, so unless
someone else says something really ridiculous that hasn't already been
countered, I'll just let it go, until I've had time to confirm the fix...

Hello Tanstaafl,

I didn't file it (it was already filed), but it is:

https://www.libreoffice.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=76565

Have you tested the daily build which included the patch committed on
2014-8-17?

Irrelevant.

???
What you are responsible for 60+ PC's and you are not willing to test on
a test PC a potential fix to a problem which is serious to you?

I didn't say I wasn't willing, or even hadn't. I said it is irrelevant
to the fact that this massively major regression has caused us to be
unable to update past the 4.1.x series, ie, for the last two MAJOR
version releases.

As I said: I cannot install 'Daily builds' on 60+ PCs.

To the one who suggested that it is on us users to 'prod the devs to do
the back-porting'... seriously? Really? PLONK

I guess that is your reaction to someone not agreeing with you,

No, it is my reaction to someone who suggests something that is
ludicrous on its face.

That said, maybe you didn't mean it as it sounded, so I'll give you the
benefit of the doubt...

Forgive me if I'm intrusive, but there is something I actually do not understand in your situation. If you are not comfortable disclosing this by all means mail me off list: I would like to better understand the situation because I feel there is some deep misunderstanding on how free software projects work and of what your business problem is.

You write that you're a one person company and that your customer has 60 seats you are -presumably- administering in some ways. Am I correct here?
You claim not to have the time to test the build on 60 machines - sure, I get this, but then test it on two machines. You call the bug in question a major regression, and forget that the people providing quality assurance are indeed volunteers. They either catch a regression, or they don't. If they don't, automated tests can catch it, or won't. If it were major, I am sure it would have already been patched. Now back to your situation. You do not have the time to test the build, no time to do quality assurance, but if I'm correct you are selling something to your customer that involves LibreOffice, aren't you?

If that is the case, could you please explain what you sell to them? Surely you must add some value other than "grab the latest stable release and install it"? By the way, they are your customers. Some LibreOffice developers do have customers and as a result are paid to work on LibreOffice. The money does not appear out of thin air. They sell support and development services. Now, the LibreOffice project has no customer. It has a community whose users are a part of. As such users have a rather limited role unless they want to contribute. I know it offends some people to read that, but that is the way it works in *every* (surviving) FOSS project.

The point I'm getting at is this one: if you are a professional distributing LibreOffice, that is great, but you must be something else than a user on a user list. You must at least have some expertise, and at the moment, I don't see you being anything else than a user who has a bug but will not test a patch because of whatever reason I will not judge. By doing that, you are expressing your (legitimate) choice, which is to be passive and not do anything to solve the situation. You have complained that this is a regression and not a bug, but regressions are not intentional, and they are bugs anyway (a regression is a description of a particular kind of bug). As a service provider of some kind, providing some services involving LibreOffice you may want to do something to help your customers, and yet you won't do anything (testing the patch, accelerate the delivery of the patch, paying for L3 support or whatever). I am afraid I don't understand why you're even complaining :slight_smile:

Thanks,

Charles.

Hi Charles,

No one suggested that users should have to pay.

You obviously haven't read this entire thread. Florian is trying to
extort money from me to fix this major regression.

ha ha, this one made me laugh, I imagine Florian... really you don't
mean what you wrote.

But it might be interesting for a certain user to get a
bug/feature/regression fixed ASAP and therefore having the option is
in my view great.

As I said - suggesting a user pay for enhancements is one thing, and one
I agree wholeheartedly with.

Major regressions, on the other hand, are a very different issue, and
your lumping them together is just plain disingenuous.

so concerned as you are, you're following the new features page on the
wiki and test the areas they may impact you, don't you? And then test
daily builds to see if your bugs are fixed and there is no regressions?

A regression should be dealt with, and in your case it has, just not
fast enough for you - but that is live.

Yep... and the consequences, in this case, are that my biggest client is
seriously considering switching to Microsoft office, and because of the
situation, caused purely by the Libreoffice devs refusal to fix the
regression in a timely fashion, I have little ammunition to counter the
push. I know no one here truly cares, but I do, and this is in fact the
only reason I'm discussing this right now - meaning, I'm not a troll,
I'm not here to just diss you guys or anything, I have what I consider
to be very legitimate complaints about the way that this particular
regression has, and is being, handled, and believe that (most of) the
comments attempting to blame *me* for not 'ponying up' are irrelevant,
invalid, and in some cases, extremely objectionable (see the paragraph
following the next sentence as to why I take it as far as 'objectionable').

So again, if you are concerned by regressions, you should follow what is
develop and what could have an impact for you. You can even write a
regression test that I can put on our manual tests system. You don't
need to wait for things to happen by themselves.

Obviously, some of the volunteers here disagree, but on that note...

I am also very aware that a very good number of the actual Libreoffice
developers are paid to work on it (some full, some part) time, so it
isn't like Libreoffice is a *purely* volunteer effort. In fact, it is,
most likely, much too big of a project to survive on a purely volunteer
basis, so please stop talking as if this were the case - it isn't.

Yes but paid by whom?

If I where you I would just test the proposed fix in the daily build to
make sure it is fixed the way you expect it to get fixed.

Oh, I will be doing this as soon as time permits, but for the last 3
weeks, my plate has been full, and again, since I reverted to 4.1.6 way
back when, the bug hasn't on the front burner.

Oh so who's gonna do the work? QA volunteers again will do the work for
your company...

Kind regards
Sophie

Hi :slight_smile:
I don't think that bullying users is particularly clever or productive.

Lets take a completely different scenario as an example. Lets say that
someone buys a can-opener. They use it and like it so at Christmas they
buy a new one as a present for a friend. The new one doesn't work. The
person takes the opener back to the shop and gets told that they should
have paid a few thousand on the research&development of the new one and
that it's the users fault for the can-opener being broken.

Ridiculous right?
Regards form
Tom :slight_smile:

We have to do the difference between SOHO users (single/home users) and
corporate users. This is what Werner was explaining by 'being more
patient' for single/home users because the others have the ability to
benefit from the ecosystem.
This is something extremely important to understand that companies are
not only big users but also actors, they are those who make LibreOffice
too beside the volunteers here.
So you may say that what I wrote is ridiculous, but if we want
LibreOffice to thrive and have less bugs and more quality, this is
something to really take into account.

Kind regards
Sophie

Hi :slight_smile:
I don't think that bullying users is particularly clever or productive.

bullying?

Lets take a completely different scenario as an example. Lets say that
someone buys a can-opener. They use it and like it so at Christmas they
buy a new one as a present for a friend. The new one doesn't work. The
person takes the opener back to the shop and gets told that they should
have paid a few thousand on the research&development of the new one and
that it's the users fault for the can-opener being broken.

Ridiculous right?

Yes indeed. And that is indeed a completely different example you're taking, because you are comparing buying apples to being part of a community project developing a software.

Best,

Charles.

Hi :slight_smile:
Yeh, it's good to know when a bug patch is released. It's a bit
complicated for most normal users to test it though so it's even better to
know when the patch is in a main release. I thought bug-tracker did that
already but i can imagine why such notifications might be easily missed in
some cases.
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Hi :slight_smile:
Why then do you not engage with actually helping people on the Users
Mailing List when they write in with some problem?

I am sorry, I am a volunteer and user support is not my specialty. I handle marketing tasks (essentially social networks and website related stuff). Before I used to be a member of the board of the Document Foundation and my involvement was broader, however users support even at that time wasn't my focus.

You seem to be saying that because it's a community project that every
person should be involved with every part of it.

No, don't put words in my mouth. Read the thread again carefully. Every person has the potential and freedom to get involved in any part of the project. No one tells you to be a developer if you don't want to be one. But if your business is selling services on LibreOffice, then you may seriously want to provide something else than users support.

So, lets see you
solve some problems for users.

I was going to leave it at that, but actually I think it is worth pointing out the following points. I am part of the founders of the LibreOffice project. It does not mean I'm better than anyone here, but LibreOffice is what I've done to solve problems for users. Granted, they may not be bugs, and I may not provide support for users, but I help users avoid vendor lock-in and regain their digital freedom.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity of remembering this.

Cheers,

Charles.

@Tom D., Sophi, Charles H., Cor, *,

Please stop!

Charles S. (aka Tanstaafl) has agreed to check out the function on master to
see if it has addressed the UX regression introduced with the new inline
field editing introduced at 4.2--when we have feed back we will revisit
fdo#76565 and requesting backport of the patch.

That was all that Werner and I had asked, and in my opinion the response we
were seeking.

The rest is just noise.

Stuart

Daily builds _are_ test builds.

You know what features/functions are important in your environment:
* You test for that.
* Then you test for fixes to bugs that you reported.
* Then you test for fixes that others reported, but affect your environment.
# In doing those tests, ignore what claims may or may not have been said about a specific build.
Things may have been inadvertently fixed, or broken, between builds.

The devs have no idea how people use the product, and thus only test a minuscle subset of available features, functions, and capabilities.
QA tests a slightly larger subset of those features, functions, and capabilities.

jonathon