[Qt-creator] Creator stability

[Bill King]

On 03/25/2010 08:18 PM, Poenitz Andre (Nokia-D-Qt/Berlin) wrote:
>
> There is no promise (and never has been) that Creator master branch 
> works (including even the weirdest definitions of "works"...)
>
> If you want something that is known to compile, use a released version.
>
> We are happy about anybody actually using master and notifying us about
> any breakage but there's no guarantee whatsoever that it does anything 
> useful. We are doing our best to fix breakages quickly, though, and so far
> I had the impression that readers of this list and people on IRC find this
> concept both comprehensible and acceptable.
>   
See my "not a perception we should be portraying in a public codebase",
and my solution to this (CI build/tag/minimal run testing).
>   
>> I have reports both from internal and external users on a regular
>> basis of either creator not building, or creator crashing upon startup.
>>     
> Startup crashes are most of the time caused by unclean builds. 
> git clean -dxf && qmake -r && make && tons of coffee && be done.
>
> That's not the main problem here. The first problem is that people seem
> to send their reports about Qt Creator to you and not to us, and the 
> second is that even then those reports do not end up, say, here on the
> mailing list or in JIRA (barring the current incident).
>   
:) I'm a qt dev, these are all proffesional devs, this is the first
thing we tried, when the days it doesn't run outnumber the days it does
run, that's a quality issue.
>   
>> I have pushed the externals to submit bugreports,
>>     
> Good. Chances to get stuff fixed are way better with a decent bug report.
>
>   
>> but, again, my experience here has been less than glowing.
>>     
> Mind to elaborate? As in "your favourite bug has not been fixed the 
> next day"? In that case, honestly, I'd have a hard time to feign surprise.
>   
"Doesn't happen here" and then perceived as dropped (no response to
extra information, no transition to accepted, only now transitioned to
open/accepted and prioritsed after nearly 3 weeks).
>   
>> Being close to the front lines of the project, sometimes this can be missed.
>>
>> To fix these issues, can we implement some sort of staging/CI system
>> like we have for Qt?
>>     
> Is that what you really want? 
>
> No integrations for a fortnight because some test broke?
>   
If it takes you a fortnight to get a passing branch, then you have much
greater issues than we initially suspected. Pulse builds are down to 4
hours. A minimal set of testing shuould take 3 minutes, so 4 hours
turnaround if you haven't broken the build. If you have, then it won't
integrate until it's fixed. If that takes a fortnight, then yeah, time
to hit up HR for more staff.
> I guess that would quickly yield pretty dry blood at the bleeding edge.
>
> You can certainly setup a "really stable" branch guarded by CI if you
> think this helps, but we basically have that in form of releases.
>   
Not even pretty stable, just a "it compiles, it starts, it opens
projects". Most people can accept that, and it will increase the
stability perception multiple-fold.
>   
>> For qml usage, bleeding edge is the only choice currently, and the
>> perceived quality of creator from the bleeding edgers is that
>> creator's... not usable at all. That is not the Qt way, and not a
>> perception we should be having. Creator is an excellent product, and one
>> I use daily, and I'd like to go back to bleeding edge, as that's where
>> all the cool new features are :)
>>     
> It's not a perception I have either. I see Creator master branch used in 
> "production" outside the company basically daily, and while there are days
> when one regrets the pull and has to back up it usually work. This is not
> using QML, though, but application startup is most certainly covered.
>
> So back to business: If you have an issue, mention it on #qt-creator
> or file a bug.
>
> Andre'
>
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>   


-- 
Bill King, Software Engineer
Qt Development Frameworks, Nokia Pty Ltd
Brisbane Office