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Hexsplosions

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Hello,

Disclaimer: I am a huge advocate of IPS, therefore this is not a gripe just for the sake of it.

Request: Please, for the love of all things buggy, bring back the 'fixed in' field on the bug tracker. We're now up to 4.0.4 with 4.0.5 imminent and we have absolutely no clarity in which release a fixed bug is actually fixed. If we're holding back an upgrade because of a particular bug, which in my case is themes related, or are otherwise waiting for a bug fix that's affecting a live site, we have no idea which upcoming release contains the fix we're waiting for.

Thank you. :)

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Which bug? I can look it up for you.

​Thanks Mark, but this is a problem in general. I wouldn't expect to be able to ask IPS to confirm each time I want to know if a bug is fixed in an upcoming release, but I would like to be able to find out for myself.

Even a change log that's updated with the relevant bugs resolved would be better than no idea at all.

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It's a little tricky because sometimes the situation changes. Most of the time (other than a day or so before release when we've built and the build has gone to testing) if we mark something fixed it means "fixed in the next release".

Sometimes we suddenly have to change track though, as we did with 4.0.4. We were working on what we assumed would be 4.0.4, but some things came up we wanted to get a fix out for sooner, so we released that as 4.0.4 and what would have been 4.0.4 became 4.0.5. This is rare, but not unheard of (for this reason actually, internally we don't even refer to version numbers until after release, the branches we're working on are named generically).

When this happens we could of course go through the bug tracker and updated the "fixed in" version for each bug, but that would be both time consuming and not even entirely accurate - often a bug report doesn't tell the whole story (which is why a list of bug reports as a changelog also doesn't really work).

As I say, if there is a particular issue you're interested in, you can just ask. Though if you've got an issue that's significantly impacting your live site, I'd recommend contacting technical support rather than using the bug tracker anyway - you'll get a quicker response.

All that being said though, we are working on ways to make this better. You'll notice the upgrade notice in the AdminCP now displays release notes and we have been discussing ways of providing a more detailed changelog. Plus, as I say, under normal circumstances, "fixed" means "fixed in the next release".

 

Well that was pending at the time but I see Andy has replied now :) 

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I stopped reporting massive amounts of bugs because I stopped seeing the "Fixed" tag. If I do not know if my bugs are being looked at or fixed and my times being wasted it appears it's time to stop, This new way of reporting must be too hip for me. :D

 

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It's good to know it's being thought about and considered, but the explanation provided - while lengthy - wasn't particularly clear.

  1. Was the "fixed in version" field abandoned intentionally?
  2. If so, it sounds like the rationale in doing so was simply that it wasn't worth the effort to maintain? Were there any other reasons, or was that it?
  3. If not, is it coming back?

At a time when there are more bugs and more versions, it seems like the field is all the more critical for clarity...

Plus, as I say, under normal circumstances, "fixed" means "fixed in the next release".

Easy enough to just make that the default, then, but to still allow for more specific data if available... 

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We are not going to make fixed in version lists at this time since most bugs we are fixing are outside of the bug tracker. Therefore any list would be incomplete and futile.

The best thing to do is simply upgrade and see if a bug you were experiencing goes away. It's very clear that way.

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We are not going to make fixed in version lists at this time since most bugs we are fixing are outside of the bug tracker. Therefore any list would be incomplete and futile.

The best thing to do is simply upgrade and see if a bug you were experiencing goes away. It's very clear that way.

​Okay... just out of curiosity, when you say they're "outside" of the bug tracker - where are they, then?

I thought the bug tracker was supposed to be the end-all be-all source of bugs/issues being worked on... I'm assuming then that you've got JIRA or something else that you use internally?

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​Okay... just out of curiosity, when you say they're "outside" of the bug tracker - where are they, then?

I thought the bug tracker was supposed to be the end-all be-all source of bugs/issues being worked on... I'm assuming then that you've got JIRA or something else that you use internally?
 

 

  • Fixes found from support tickets from non-technical users who do not know how to submit a bug to the tracker

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Cool, but... wouldn't it be a good idea to add a bug entry and close it out, on their behalf, in those cases? For visibility and reporting?

Otherwise there's no single repository of all bugs, which... I dunno, just seems like something you would want, as developers.

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I stopped reporting massive amounts of bugs because I stopped seeing the "Fixed" tag. If I do not know if my bugs are being looked at or fixed and my times being wasted it appears it's time to stop, This new way of reporting must be too hip for me. :D

 

​You should still report bugs on behalf of yourself and all the other IPS clients.  As a theme developer, you're probably going to encounter and see more bugs than a typical admin, and it benefits the entire community and the future of this community to identify the bugs.  We all want and need a platform that's dependable for everyone.  Whether or not IPS will correct or fix the bugs is up to the developers, but that shouldn't stop you or me or anyone else from reporting them.  

Your time is appreciated both directly and indirectly by everyone, even if it's never publicly stated.  

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@Joel R

I've thrown a few in recently in and out of the tracker, forum and tickets. Hard to stop entirely when I do what I do. I've had some awesome development time and sites using the themes. Time put into the themes have been intense and at times it's very hard to be drawn away from them to report bugs :D . I'm a perfectionist so that makes it worse. :D 

Thank you Joel

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Cool, but... wouldn't it be a good idea to add a bug entry and close it out, on their behalf, in those cases? For visibility and reporting?

Otherwise there's no single repository of all bugs, which... I dunno, just seems like something you would want, as developers.

​We have other methods to keep track of what changes in a release.

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The best thing to do is simply upgrade and see if a bug you were experiencing goes away. It's very clear that way.

​That doesn’t sound like a very professional approach. Every version fixes bugs and comes with new ones. I pick the time to upgrade very carefully because of this. If a certain bug fix is crucial for my site, I try to be fast with upgrading. If I don’t have crucial bugs but see problems with the latest releases (as the countless image problems in 4.0.5) I will wait. Why should hundreds of admins check if certain bugs are fixed, if you can signal it with one click of a button in the bug tracker?

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​That doesn’t sound like a very professional approach. Every version fixes bugs and comes with new ones. I pick the time to upgrade very carefully because of this. If a certain bug fix is crucial for my site, I try to be fast with upgrading. If I don’t have crucial bugs but see problems with the latest releases (as the countless image problems in 4.0.5) I will wait. Why should hundreds of admins check if certain bugs are fixed, if you can signal it with one click of a button in the bug tracker?

​I'm sorry for the confusion -- perhaps we should have clarified that this is a short-term approach. Naturally, as SOP, we don't expect you to upgrade on a whim to determine if a bug is fixed if the upgrade is going to otherwise be disruptive. 

In the short-term, we are working a bit differently for the beginning stages of IPS4. Because of the sheer volume of support requests, we are fixing the majority of bugs via the ticket system. Eventually, the bug tracker will be a better live indication of what's happening. Right now, our primary concern is to keep things moving - which I'm sure you can agree that we're doing relatively well. With the hundreds of requests we're fielding every day, it's just not feasible (at this very moment) to cross-reference every bug report against every ticket which again, is where most bugs are being resolved currently. We'll be shifting focus as things continue to stabilize and the bug tracker will regain better organization. 

In the meantime, thanks for your patience. :)

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We are not going to make fixed in version lists at this time since most bugs we are fixing are outside of the bug tracker. Therefore any list would be incomplete and futile.

The best thing to do is simply upgrade and see if a bug you were experiencing goes away. It's very clear that way.

 

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We have explained it several times already:

Most bugs in the bug tracker are already fixed. We are just focusing on issues client submit directly to us.

My comment about "simply upgrade" is just my way of thinking. I always stay up to date with all the software I have. It's just a good practice.

Every so often we do a sweep through the bug tracker to clean it up:

So, in summary, as we have said many times do not judge it all on the bug tracker. There's a lot more going on :)

 

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My comment about "simply upgrade" is just my way of thinking. I always stay up to date with all the software I have. It's just a good practice.

 

 

​This may sound harsh Charles, but the truth is that when it comes to *most* software that is the case, when it comes to IPS software my experience is that it's not. Over 10 years of being customers has taught us that early versions of the software have too many bugs, so we always wait, and part of that process of deciding when to upgrade is checking the bugtracker. 

 

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I understand that but we are simply saying we are not currently focused on the bug tracker. It's not like we're not fixing things :) 

We are currently focused on client-impacting issues presented in tickets. Issues that cause things to simply not work. Many of these issues are duplicated in the bug tracker and every so often we go through and clean it up.

It's simply a cause of prioritization. We are currently focused on issues clients are brining to us directly in tickets that impact a large number of people. At this time it would not be smart for us to ignore those and instead work only on bug tracker reports which are often very low-priority issues.

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I understand that but we are simply saying we are not currently focused on the bug tracker. It's not like we're not fixing things :) 

We are currently focused on client-impacting issues presented in tickets. Issues that cause things to simply not work. Many of these issues are duplicated in the bug tracker and every so often we go through and clean it up.

It's simply a cause of prioritization. We are currently focused on issues clients are brining to us directly in tickets that impact a large number of people. At this time it would not be smart for us to ignore those and instead work only on bug tracker reports which are often very low-priority issues.

​I did edit my original post as tbh I didn't fancy getting embroiled in this, but anyway.

No-one is asking you to ignore anything, and clearly prioritising customer issues is the way forward, but to go to the extend of virtually leaving  the public bugtracker untouched isn't helpful to either your customers, your potential customers, and surely therefore your business. 

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Nor would ignoring people with priority "my site is down" issues :)

I'm simply explaining what we are doing. I do understand from the outside it may not seem to make sense. The bug tracker will get a cleanup again with all the already-fixed issues soon and will probably get proper focus in a few weeks time as we are getting fewer and fewer critical tickets coming in as things stabilize with each release.

Keep in mind you might see a few people posting franticly on our site here about issues but we have hundreds of people upgrade each day without issue. But those that do have critical issues in this early stage we will give them our focus. The less-critical bugs will get their focus and, as I said, we are getting far fewer critical reports coming in so that time is coming soon.

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