Nah! Real men don’t test! LOL…Of course I will test!
I have much work to do before my first Web 2.0 app goes productive, so it will be 2022 R1 at least before I am really ready. 2021 R3 simply resolved critical issues that were present in previous releases and made it impossible to even consider spending time developing anything other than a test application with these releases (for me and my use cases - others did and were happy). Now, new applications are being developed as web 2.0. Not necessarily compiled with 2021 R3. Yes, issues are present. Some more serious than others. I use GraffitiSuite controls instead of some of the problematic controls. That is one hurdle cleared. And yes, some issues with listbox for example, could still potentially affect my applications. Before committing to production, these issues will have to be addressed or worked around. All of this is par for the course.
You are forgetting one factor… We don’t know know Xojo under the hood… but they do.
For someone who knows the code base well, knowing something can happen, to them may indicate the likely place in the code that MIGHT cause it, and least take a quick look at that code to see if an edge was was missed.
But if it’s not reproducible then no one will ever know if it’s the same issue the user is seeing, and never know if that issue has been fixed.
It also assumes that a very experienced developer is triaging a bug that neither the user nor a Xojo support person was able to reproduce. That’s unlikely to be a good use of that resource unless that issue has achieved a very high priority for some other reason.
I remember some times ago, I read here that Xojo compiler was migrating to LLVM (or a name like that). I’m not sure to understand what it means. Does Xojo make a bridge between what we write in our source code and a compiler made by someone else (not by Xojo)?
Ask in others word, does Xojo build the entire application from our code or do they use software from others developers?
If yes, they simply can’t correct all the bugs we report (or may wait for a correction instead of develop a workaround).
Sorry for my naive questions but I’m trying to understand.
Xojo Inc write the tokeniser, parser, semantic analyser and code generator for the Xojo language. Their code generator spits out LLVM intermediate language which LLVM then optimises and emits the compiled binary.
LLVM is a massive, open source and battle tested compiler that is used by the world’s largest companies including Apple. It was originally created by Chris Lattner when a PhD student. You might also know him as the creator of Swift.
The majority of the bugs being talked about here will be in Xojo’s framework. As an end user - you don’t need to know the specifics of the framework but, internally, the framework is a collection of C++ wrappers around OS-specific classes and methods. For example, Xojo’s FolderItem class uses Apple’s fileReferenceURL (I think).
As I stated earlier on this thread, there is such a thing as troubleshooting by inspection. You have a reported symptom, you know the code, and you think to yourself “How might it be possible for this condition to arise, even if I don’t see it happening here and now on my installation?” Again, as I said earlier, I don’t expect Xojo to spend days on some initially unreproducible bug, but I do hope they always give it some thought and consideration before closing a case, rather than simply closing it immediately because it didn’t manifest for them on the first try, which is what it feels like sometimes happens.
That’s all true, but in terms of providing sensible, informative, helpful compilation error messages it is far inferior to the previous RealStudio compiler. 90% of the time I have to completely ignore what it’s telling me and infer “Oh, yeah, that means I have a syntax error”.
Hi, I’ve been watching this subject from afar, but feel I have to respond on this point. As a developer who has worked on many compilers for many years within Unisys and contracts with Apple, once your source code has been passed and converted into the byte instructions to pass to the final compiler it is almost impossible to relate it back to your original code, all comments, blank lines, variable definitions and conditionals have pretty much been stripped or replaced with something unrecognisable . The best you can do is give some sort of suggestion that maybe something is wrong in a particular location but an original source line is pretty much out the window.
No.
If the customer has a problem and the error is not reproducible for me, I talk to the customer to solve the problem. If it is then not reproducible, the case is closed.
One missing detail here is that bugs are verified by Robin, who does not work on the product itself. Robin (or any QA staff really) is not familiar with the code, they are familiar with the product on a level similar to a customer. So getting an unreproducible bug through will require getting the attention of an engineer.
This is why the solutions of a lone developer like you or I does not scale up to a multi developer team like Xojo. They have enough volume that spending engineering large amounts time on bug verification doesn’t make sense. That’s why they offloaded them job. It allows engineers to devote more time to engineering, but it admittedly costs some experience at the verification stage.
I’m not just arguing for the sake of being right. I’m saying this because I’ve been on all sides of this. I’m a lone developer of decent volume - about 100k users - that has time to, as you suggest, spend time working with the customer to figure out what’s going on while I look at code to come up with ideas. I’ve been a Xojo engineer before there was a team member responsible for wrangling bugs, and I was an engineer after. What you’re asking for just doesn’t work at Xojo’s scale.
I just went to help xojo with a bug, decided to check through feedback to see if the issue has already been reported.
Perform a search, limit results to “Open” search results are now peppered with bugs and feature requests because I can no longer limit the Status away from “Closed (Won’t Implement)” or “Reviewed” as every thing is now “Open”.
Sooooooooooo frustrating you cannot imagine, end result, posting here as a record of my disappointment and not helping xojo with a bug. Closed feedback, living in ignorance, it seems to be the way.
