[steering-discuss] LibreOffice TSC call, Thur May 12th - 15:00 UTC...

This Thur May 12th - 15:00 UTC

Prototype agenda below - please reply with anything else that is
interesting you want to talk about.

* AA still pending:
        + encourage QA guys to quietly dig at snapshots (Sophie + Thorsten)
        + research when gio came into widespread being (Caolan)
                cf. http://www.gtk.org/download-linux.html
        + the rdb setup stuff is still too cumbersome (Bjoern)
  + get SmartArt into master as an experimental feature (Thorsten)
  + UNO / ABI breaking changes into a set of wiki page for 4.0 (Bjoern +
Kohei)
    + add binfilter removal (Norbert)
  + write list of things that suck for newcomers with taste (Mitch /
Christian)

* 3.4 status ... (Petr)
  + beta5?
* release plan change
* Anything else ...

  Call in numbers:

Toll Free / Freephone :
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REPUBLIC 800-700-238 FINLAND 0-800-9-14612 FRANCE
080-563-6113 GERMANY 0800-664-4248 HUNGARY 06-800-18162
INDIA 000-800-852-1259 IRELAND 1800-992-927 MEXICO
001-866-239-5590 NETHERLANDS 0800-020-0407 NORWAY 800-14731
PORTUGAL 8008-60437 SPAIN 800-300-054 SWITZERLAND
0800-120-033 UNITED KINGDOM 0808-238-6021 USA 866-803-2146
Toll Number : USA +1-517-466-2380
Participant Passcode: 4209985

Florian Effenberger wrote:
> the next Steering Committee phone conference for calendar week 19 is
> tomorrow:
>
> Thursday, May 12th, 1600 UTC (=1800 German time)
>
Um - a bit suboptimal, that's kinda the fixed slot for the TSC
weekly meeting - any chance to reschedule to one hour earlier?

and

Andras Timar wrote:

This Thur May 12th - 15:00 UTC

Sorry folks, I stand corrected - seems I still had the pre-DST times
in my head. So all should be well with the original SC call slot at

Thursday, May 12th, 1600 UTC (=1800 German time)

Cheers,

-- Thorsten, who just viscerally hates this DST business, and wants
   it to die a horrible death...

Hi,

Sorry folks, I stand corrected - seems I still had the pre-DST times
in my head. So all should be well with the original SC call slot at

  Thursday, May 12th, 1600 UTC (=1800 German time)

shit happens. :slight_smile: I agree, let's leave it with the original time then as you wrote above. I've just updated the Doodle poll.

Florian

Hi Rainer, all,
> Andras Timar schrieb:
>> This Thur May 12th - 15:00 UTC
>> * Anything else ...
>
> Hi,
>
> may be a new QA/IRCSession
> <http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/QA/IRCSessions>
> should be discussed.

I've already proposed one on the tdf-discuss list, but with absolutely no success, see:
http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/msg05948.html
Christian has proposed to help me to prepare the session, but with so little enthusiasm, I'm not convince that it's the good time to invest in that now. May be when Litmus will be launch, QA may get more publicity?
Kind regards
Sophie

Andras Timar schrieb:

This Thur May 12th - 15:00 UTC
* Anything else ...

Hi,

may be a new QA/IRCSession
<http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/QA/IRCSessions>
should be discussed.

CU

Rainer Bielefeld

Hi all,

I will be missing out this time because of UDS sessions.

        + the rdb setup stuff is still too cumbersome (Bjoern)

pending

  + UNO / ABI breaking changes into a set of wiki page for 4.0
(Bjoern + Kohei)

done, will be blogged about next week.

Best Regards from Budapest,

Bjoern

Hi,

I've already proposed one on the tdf-discuss list, but with absolutely
no success, see:
http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/msg05948.html
Christian has proposed to help me to prepare the session, but with so
little enthusiasm, I'm not convince that it's the good time to invest in
that now. May be when Litmus will be launch, QA may get more publicity?

maybe an announcement to announce@ could help getting new QA volunteers? This might be very much in line with the announcement strategy Italo was writing about.

Florian

Hi *,

[...]
This was the first time when Rainer joined to our call. He does a
tremendous job with bug triaging and QA. He wants to contact most active
bugzilla users and coordinate their work. The problem is that we have
many unconfirmed bugs and incomplete bug reports.

Actually only 30 unconfirmed ones (well, those that use the unconfirmed state).
I don't know who would have the rights to do so, but enforcing
unconfirmed state for non-developer/non-qa people might make sense to
get a better overview.

Those may be blockers,
but they have to be confirmed and they have to be reproducible.
freedesktop bugzilla does not support the NEEDINFO status (we need to
find a workaround, I guess...)

No, that's not quite correct. OOo had a needmoreinfo keyword, not a
needmoreinfo status - And fdo bugzilla has a NEEDINFO keyword, so
pretty much the same.
The big difference was that only people with special IZ permissions
could promote an issue from unconfirmed state to new state.

fdo bugzilla even has the NEEDINFO bug status - but that rather is the
final resolution after there was no response after a while (like
closing the issue as worksforme or invalid in OOo's IssueZilla)

The first step would be to make use of Unconfirmed state, then
QA-volunteers can direct their efforts to those that have not yet been
reviewed.

ciao
Christian

Hi,

* AA still pending:
        + encourage QA guys to quietly dig at snapshots (Sophie + Thorsten)

still pending, but there is progress, beta5 pre-release was announced

        + research when gio came into widespread being (Caolan)
                cf. http://www.gtk.org/download-linux.html

still pending

        + the rdb setup stuff is still too cumbersome (Bjoern)

still pending

  + get SmartArt into master as an experimental feature (Thorsten)

still pending

  + UNO / ABI breaking changes into a set of wiki page for 4.0 (Bjoern +
Kohei)

Done, will be blogged next week.

    + add binfilter removal (Norbert)
  + write list of things that suck for newcomers with taste (Mitch /
Christian)

still pending

* 3.4 status ... (Petr)
  + beta5?

We release beta5 instead of rc1 because of high number of
blocker/annoying bugs and localization bugs in beta4 on Windows. The
number of real blockers is reasonable now, chances are that we can
reduce them futher until Monday. On Monday we can decide if we branch
libreoffice-3-4-0 and tag the rc1.

After creating libreoffice-3-4-0 (all commits need 3 approvals)
libreoffice-3-4 will be merged to master, but first DEV300m106 needs to
be merged to master. Unfortunately DEV300m106 still does not compile,
there are problems in filter module. Kendy will try to fix them
tomorrow. If he can't fix them, then somebody else needs to help.

* release plan change

http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Release_Criteria page was updated.
With the help of the marketing people we deliver the message to our
users about the advantages of time based releases and explain what
problems can be expected.

* Anything else ...

This was the first time when Rainer joined to our call. He does a
tremendous job with bug triaging and QA. He wants to contact most active
bugzilla users and coordinate their work. The problem is that we have
many unconfirmed bugs and incomplete bug reports. Those may be blockers,
but they have to be confirmed and they have to be reproducible.
freedesktop bugzilla does not support the NEEDINFO status (we need to
find a workaround, I guess...)

QA sessions on IRC are also planned. There was one a few weeks ago but
activity of the community was low. It's a question how to reach
potential helpers. Via mailing lists?

Feel free to add anything that I forgot to mention.

Best regards,
Andras

Hi *,

Actually only 30 unconfirmed ones (well, those that use the unconfirmed state).
I don't know who would have the rights to do so, but enforcing
unconfirmed state for non-developer/non-qa people might make sense to
get a better overview.

Pardon for butting in, but I have to agree with Christian on this one.
Bugzilla is a bit of a PITA for its, errmm, lack of a rigourous QA
triage setting.

No, that's not quite correct. OOo had a needmoreinfo keyword, not a
needmoreinfo status - And fdo bugzilla has a NEEDINFO keyword, so
pretty much the same.
The big difference was that only people with special IZ permissions
could promote an issue from unconfirmed state to new state.

fdo bugzilla even has the NEEDINFO bug status - but that rather is the
final resolution after there was no response after a while (like
closing the issue as worksforme or invalid in OOo's IssueZilla)

The first step would be to make use of Unconfirmed state, then
QA-volunteers can direct their efforts to those that have not yet been
reviewed.

Well said. Does that also mean we could also signal confirmed bugs to
the relevant "recognised" developer if there is one ? That's what we
could do on QA in OOo. However, I fear my pet module, Base, may find
itself in somewhat of a dead end :wink:

Alex

Hi,

Kendy will try to fix them
tomorrow. If he can't fix them, then somebody else needs to help.

Pushed what I was able to do today - svg filter building, most of oox
too, but not fully yet. Any help appreciated.

Regards,
Kendy

Hi,

I have added other people from TSC to CC.

Rainer Bielefeld píše v Ne 15. 05. 2011 v 10:51 +0200:

Hi,

as I said during the discussion, I created a list with Bugs that might
be 3.4 blockers. Of course, it's only my private opinion, but may be an
impress like a barometer of public opinion?

<http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/User:RBd/Workbench#.22My.22_3.4.0_blockers>

Nice list. I think that we should do our best for fix the bug 36991
(suspicious random crash with pictures) and the bug 36482 (missing PDF
options dialog).

Otherwise, it is perfectly fine to have these bugs linked to the "most
annoying bugs". Though, I think that neither of them blocks the 3.4.0
release. See my notes below.

Note that the download page will suggest 3.3.2 as the stable version.
Nobody should expect that 3.4.0 would be less buggy than 3.3.2. Most
bugs in your list were in 3.3.x. If we were not able to fix some bugs
for 3.4.x bug fix releases, it was because they were not easy to fix. I
agree that they are annoying but they can't block the 3.4.0 release.

Bug 36991 - crash when duplicating draw page with linked wmf pictures
I think a crash in a basic function that might affect many users is not
acceptable.

I agree that it is annoying and we should fix it ASAP. It seems to
behave very randomly. There might be more similar crashes...

Well, I think that it need not block the 3.4.0 release. It is reported
with linked pictures but pictures are not linked by default. Also I am
not able to reproduce this when I link the picture only once.

Bug 36820 - PDFEXPORT with option "Tagged PDF" crashes WRITER documents
I think a crash in a basic function that might affect many users is not
acceptable. Unfortunately even not confirmed.

I do not think that it is a blocker. It is reported only for a
particular document. Two other people are not able to reproduce this.

Bug 36545 - Crash when selecting target after inserting hyperlink to
database document (.odb)
I think a crash in a basic function that might affect many users is not
acceptable.

Alex writes in the comment #8 that he sees it with OOo-3.2.1 => old bug
=> can't block 3.4.0

Bug 36306 - LibreOffice 3.4 beta1 crash in Letter Wizard
I think a crash in a basic function that might affect many users is not
acceptable. But I am not sure how many users really use that wizard.

I agree that it is annoying. Well, as you say, we are not sure how many
users need this functionality. I think that it is not a core function
and need not be working in 3.4.0.

Bug 31606 - Exporting a selection of pages to PDF has pagerange wrong
because of blank pages
An office suite should be able to print some selected pages and nothing
else. With this problem confidential information might reach wrong
recipient.

Happened also with LO-3.3.0 => old => can't block 3.4.0

Bug 36482 - PDF EXPORT Options dialog missing - in relation with user
profile of previous (...) version
Very visible bug, workaround inacceptable if lots of users will be
affected. But no blocker if we can be sure that only a limited number of
users will be affected.

I agree that we should fix it ASAP. It would be great to fix them for
3.4.0. IMHO, it need not block the release. We have a workaround and we
could mention it in release notes.

Bug 33915 - user settings get lost after several restarts
Very Very annoying, but I can't tell how many users might be affected.

Happened also with LO-3.3.0 => old => can't block 3.4.0

Bug 34184 - Task: Make E-mail MAILMERGE usable.
Since LibO project has started tis feature does not work, and with every
new final release fix for the bugs gets shifted to the next and to the
next and ... . But it seems I'm the only one using email-mailmerge?

Happened also with LO-3.3.0 => old => can't block 3.4.0

Best Regards,
Petr

Bug 36991 - crash when duplicating draw page with linked wmf pictures
I think a crash in a basic function that might affect many users is not
acceptable.

I agree that it is annoying and we should fix it ASAP. It seems to
behave very randomly. There might be more similar crashes...

Well, I think that it need not block the 3.4.0 release. It is reported
with linked pictures but pictures are not linked by default. Also I am
not able to reproduce this when I link the picture only once.

I couldn't reproduce this either on Mac, but this may be due to having
other image management libraries I've installed on my system via ports
or just OSX's general image handling. For me, it was stable.

Bug 36306 - LibreOffice 3.4 beta1 crash in Letter Wizard
I think a crash in a basic function that might affect many users is not
acceptable. But I am not sure how many users really use that wizard.

I agree that it is annoying. Well, as you say, we are not sure how many
users need this functionality. I think that it is not a core function
and need not be working in 3.4.0.

This doesn't crash on OOo 3.4-dev, even though the initial dialog window
was also partially off screen. So its a bit more than annoying IMHO.

Of course, I'm sounding my own trumpet here, as I do actually write
mailmerge letters in different languages for my business activities.

Bug 33915 - user settings get lost after several restarts
Very Very annoying, but I can't tell how many users might be affected.

Happened also with LO-3.3.0 => old => can't block 3.4.0

Reminds me of an old bug that the Ubuntu versions used to have, very
disconcerting when you have a pool of users who keep ringing you up and
telling you that your latest rollout made all their user settings
disappear, and really doesn't make the product look professional !!
Again, putting the resources down to fixing things like this all boils
down to the question of how serious the Foundation is about making LibO
an appealing option to businesses. Not an easy question to answer give
the youth of the project at the moment.

Bug 34184 - Task: Make E-mail MAILMERGE usable.
Since LibO project has started tis feature does not work, and with every
new final release fix for the bugs gets shifted to the next and to the
next and ... . But it seems I'm the only one using email-mailmerge?

Happened also with LO-3.3.0 => old => can't block 3.4.0

No, not the only one by far, this is also one of my pet disappointments,
and I know for certain on the French users lists that many
administrations (schools, town halls, etc) and software prescribers that
currently use or recommend OOo are warning those users and clients to
stay away from LibO until the mailmerge issues get fixed reliably. But
then, I can't speak for any other community. In administrations,
mailmerge is used massively, even if it just for preparing pupils'
school marks, or reminders about all sorts of things from club
membership payments to a change of day in putting out the trash. It is
something that with Microsoft Office does not require a great deal of
sophistication. It took years to bring OOo to a reasonably usable state,
and now it is "seemingly" hopelessly broken in LibO, almost "overnight"
in a lot of people's eyes. This is the biggest issue with regard to
mailmerge, the visible negative impact on the community of users that
followed over from OOo or would like to. Obviously, there appears to be
a difference in how the developers within the corporate participants of
the LibO project see this and how the users in certain communities see
it. Until that difference can be reconciled, we will be stuck in
mailmerge noman's land.

Alex

PS: Sorry to all for hijacking this thread.

Hi Alexander,

Reminds me of an old bug that the Ubuntu versions used to have, very
disconcerting when you have a pool of users who keep ringing you up and
telling you that your latest rollout made all their user settings
disappear, and really doesn't make the product look professional !!

  Wow - it sounds like you need a support contract from someone, anyone -
and/or to pay a consultant to investigate the situation and fix it for
you :slight_smile: At least, I don't recall ever having seen this issue - and I
re-start LibreOffice really quite a lot - but perhaps I'm not looking
for it.

Again, putting the resources down to fixing things like this all boils
down to the question of how serious the Foundation is about making LibO
an appealing option to businesses. Not an easy question to answer give
the youth of the project at the moment.

  If you are a business - you are encouraged to help assist the
development of LibreOffice by buying support from someone :slight_smile:

  If you are an individual - then reporting excellent bugs, and/or better
providing patches, hacking, helping to review other's patches etc. are
great ways to contribute.

  ATB,

    Michael.

Hi guys,

  This huge, technical, detailed, bug specific discussion does not belong
on steering-discuss. It belongs on the developer list - (the minutes
belong there too FWIW).

  We should keep this list for more governance reasons; please reply to
anything / move threads to the freedesktop dev list.

  Thanks,

    Michael.

Hi,

  This huge, technical, detailed, bug specific discussion does not belong
on steering-discuss. It belongs on the developer list - (the minutes
belong there too FWIW).

  We should keep this list for more governance reasons; please reply to
anything / move threads to the freedesktop dev list.

thanks Michael - I actually wanted to send a similar mail in the next minutes. :slight_smile:

Florian

Looking at the bug shows:
- It did not only happen with Ubuntus build.
- It did not only happen on Ubuntu.
- It does not happen in Libreoffice 3.3.2 on Natty even for people
  reporting it before. 3.3.2 on Natty is the first official release.
- Nobody could provide any hint on how to repoduce or even provoke the
  bug.

=> The bug could be very well triggered by some bug or misconfiguration
outside of LibreOffice and thus be not reproducable at all on developer
machines. Allocating developer resources under these circumstances
on such an untriaged Heisenbug is pure waste of time. It needs way more
triage by people seeing the bug.

Best,

Bjoern

Hi Bjoern,

Looking at the bug shows:
- It did not only happen with Ubuntus build.
- It did not only happen on Ubuntu.
- It does not happen in Libreoffice 3.3.2 on Natty even for people
  reporting it before. 3.3.2 on Natty is the first official release.
- Nobody could provide any hint on how to repoduce or even provoke the
  bug.

When I said old, I meant "Happened to the firm I was in 5 or 6 years
ago" so I'm not targeting Ubuntu specifically :wink: And, to answer
Michael, we did have a support contract at the time via an external
consulting company, but nonetheless the issue could not be resolved. It
went away with a LTS upgrade !!

=> The bug could be very well triggered by some bug or misconfiguration
outside of LibreOffice and thus be not reproducable at all on developer
machines. Allocating developer resources under these circumstances
on such an untriaged Heisenbug is pure waste of time. It needs way more
triage by people seeing the bug.

The problem is how to get people to signal things like that. Something
that affects a pool of users reported by only one person, say on the
Ubuntu bug reporting system, will on the whole only be considered as a
single person bug report...

And I'll not waffle on any longer in this thread :slight_smile:

Alex