thirty bees 1.1.1 - pre-release bug hunt

[musicmaster]

If I sounded harsh I apologize. I am just getting desperate.

5 hours ago, lesley said:

Its a tough position for us, but we have to move the software ahead. The easiest way I see to get at least two of your problems fixed is to reach out to the people that made the module and the theme. Ask them to update their software to support the latest versions. I feel @Jonny will likely update his. myparcel, I am not sure

For your checkout issues, if it were me, and what I do constantly, is install something like smartlook on the site. That way I can see exactly what people are doing when the order fails so I can diagnose it. It makes repolicating the problem 1000% easier. 

Jonny is helping. But I am amazed by the extent of the upgrade. I adopted Panda 1.5 because I had to for TB 1.1. But this is much more than a few fixes under the hood. And that means extra work for me.

MyParcel will not help.

Smartlook sounds nice. But as  developer I don't have contact with the customers. And to mobilize the commercial people in between is difficult.

6 hours ago, lesley said:

We can't bloat the software to leave bugs in it and try to detect when we think someone is relying on a bug. 

Not so sure about this. 

There is nothing wrong with having (clearly marked) routines in software to guarantee backward compatibility. Prestashop 1.6 is full of it  - much of which was removed by Thirty Bees. I see such support as a show that you care about the community that uses your software. To assume that software providers will happily jump in to fix things sounds unrealistic to me. Some software is no longer supported - either because the developer stopped or because he focuses on PS 1.7. And Thirty Bees doesn't have the market share that will convince many developers with commercial arguments.

I am now maintaining a website that was maintained for some time by a company specialized in Prestashop. They added code written for Prestashop. And I now have to live with that. That is the reality we live in: you are either compatible with Prestashop or not. You cannot pick things where you want to be compatible - specially not when the user only can find out when you are not the hard way: by in depth debugging. 

[lesley]

@musicmaster I filled out a bug report to other developers from another platform this week. Let me quote that report. 

"On line 223 of the /classes/productexport.php file I think there is an issue with the join you are using to retrieve the images. Something around there seems to create an infinite loop which is eating 200gb of drive space up." 

That is how one developer tells another about a bug. More fixes under the hood, things are broke, ect are what shop owners say to me. If you have specific problems and not vague concerns, please describe them in as much detail as possible. I know of the course of this project you have been pretty good at describing windows related bugs / compatibility issues and they were fixed because someone knew what to look for and how to reproduce them.

 

For smartlook, all it is, is a snippet of javascript. You put it in a site and when a merchant contacts you and says hey a guy named bob said our checkout is broken. You can go through the user accounts and look for bobs account, see when he created a cart, then go to smartlook and watch the video. You dont need any customer interaction. Just a name or a broken cart number. 

 

Regarding backwards compatibility, let me give a great example. @Traumflug spent a ton of time rewriting the whole rounding system in thirty bees. He basically rewrote the way that thirty bees handled prices so they would be correct. Are you suggesting that he should have written a shadow system that still spit out the wrong numbers that module developers might have expected in some modules? That is insane to me. 

 

I am not sure if we are having an error in translation, or if we have different views on what compatible is. If we fix a bug and it breaks something, we do not consider that a compatibility problem 9 times out of 10. We consider that a core improvement. Now on the other hand, if we remove functionality or say change how the shipping system works and break all of the shipping modules, that is a compatibility issue. Fixing bugs is usually never a compatibility issue. 

[led24ee]

Estonian flag is wrong when installing new language. If I remember correctly this is from beginning.

[movieseals]

I can only speak for myself but here what has been my experience:

When I was using Prestashop, I had tons of issues.  Lots of things and modules were not working right and I spent a lot of time trying to fix things.

When I decided to switch to TB, the migration was very difficult - I had more help in a week than in years with Prestashop, not a diss, just stating a fact (for which I am tremendously grateful).  Like I stated, the migration was not easy by any stretch, partly because of my lack of knowledge but also partly because there was a lot of bugs.  If some modules stopped working, I bit the bullet and found alternatives that worked.  I used to need over 250 modules to get my shop to do what I wanted it to do under prestashop.  I am down to around 140 in TB!

Things are faster in TB and things that did not work well before now do.  Prestashop acknowledges themselves in their boards that some of the issues I encountered were due to bugs that were never fixed.

I use a super old theme and while I do have to do workarounds to get it to install properly, it is not a major issue.  It works as expected otherwise.  Most prestashop code works and when it doesn't, it is usually either due to bugs, compatibility issues between modules or, more often than not, server issues (some apache module was not activated or limited, or some php extension was missing).

If it does not work, I have always managed to find alternatives or code them myself (with my little knowledge) and things work better than ever.

I use to have nightmares and fear overrides - I have almost none now but they do what they are supposed to do.  Never any issues anymore with them.

I think the logic of getting rid of the bugs and get things running smoothly from the get go is sound.  If the base works, then it is much more suitable to build on than trying to patch things along as we go.

The lack of some functionalities might be frustrating but I find that 90% of modules work without issues and the rest can be tweaked to work.

I for one am grateful and I do not take the view that the software needs to bend to everyone's wills and needs - it needs to be solid, stable and working properly and it is up to us to build on it and adapt if need be.  If the platform is strong and solid, eventually developers will flock to it.

That is my two cents.

 

Edited November 30, 2019 by movieseals

[AndyC]

Not a bug per say... But asking anyway... Can you remove the Demo button and replace it with Clear cache .. I've come close a few times to hitting it

[SLiCK_303]

6 hours ago, AndyC said:

Not a bug per say... But asking anyway... Can you remove the Demo button and replace it with Clear cache .. I've come close a few times to hitting it

I second that motion.....

[led24ee]

I noticed that with ASM there is another weird thing. This on is probably mistake. If You put products on supply order then the first row is reference. This should be product reference, but at the moment this is supply order reference.

TB 1.1. Bleeding ...

Now I have some items in stock and ...  When You have only one combination of many, then customer can see that all combinations are available with delivery time for item which is in stock.  There is no quantity visible, but delivery time is same when this item is in stock. If You choose this item of combinations which is in stock then You can see also quantity. But the biggest problem is that customer can see absolutely wrong delivery time for these items which aren't actually in stock.

Edited December 2, 2019 by led24ee

[wakabayashi]

On 11/29/2019 at 11:55 PM, musicmaster said:

- regular complaints of customers who cannot complete their orders. As I am several steps away from the process I still don't know the exact problem. But I suspect that the out-of-stock problem I mentioned in my previous comment in this thread plays a role in at least some of them.

We regularly have such complaints too. First of all, I never know, if it's on our system or on the customer. Sometimes customers are using super old devices or harmful browser extension. Sometimes also customers are just "too dumb" (sorry for the words) to place an order. Of course we can critize, that things are too complex then.

But to be concrete. When was bleeding edge last updated? This issue can prevent customers from odering (happened here multiple times before the fix): https://github.com/thirtybees/thirtybees/issues/1056

[led24ee]

How about this new release ? It's almost half of December. Is this release coming soon or there are too many things/bugs to fix ?

[movieseals]

Who cares if it is late a few weeks?  It is a small, dedicated team. I would rather it be late than buggy.  Worst comes to worst, you can always painlessly experiment with the 1.1.x version.  We are getting more than I ever got under the old model.  I can be patient.  I would rather have something that works than a mountain of hidden bugs like we used to get...

The team here has its heart in the right place.  They are responsible and meticulous.  I am willing to be patient.  They will let us know when they are ready for prime time.

[led24ee]

[redacted by Traumflug]

 

Ok. Everyone has opinion. Even Clint Eastwood says this in 1988 Dirty Harry movie. Actually there is pretty good  sentence about this. But what will I do with this ? I just ask how long this new version can take. Is this really "hard" question ? If somebody will answer that yes it is coming but this will take another month or two then so it is. I can make plans when is time to upgrade. But at the moment I have zero information about that.

[toplakd]

Patience is your best friend.

New version will come when they think it's good enough to be relased.

I was running 1.0.8 for a long time, and now I'm running 1.1.x on live shop for about 3 weeks without any issues.

Edited December 11, 2019 by toplakd

[wakabayashi]

51 minutes ago, toplakd said:

now I'm running 1.1.x on live shop for about 3 weeks without any issues.

The question is always a bit, what 1.1.x means. In general our store works also pretty good right now. That's why I don't make any upgrade right now. Christmas is the time, most merchants increase their revenue. So I think december is not the best time to release/install an upgrade.

[toplakd]

Yes that's true.

I upgraded to Bleeding edge so I can use new TB Geolocation module, as in Stable 1.1 the old Geolocation does not work anymore, and TB Geolocation module is also not supported without a fix.

As I use very few modules (25) the chances for something not working are smaller than on shop fully loaded with modules.

I always make upgrade on my backup domain so I can make all the tests that are needed for ordering/contacting/paypal/bankwire in front office, and all the tests managing orders/products in backoffice.

If no errors show up during test, only than I perform upgrade on live shop.

If something fails during my testing, than I wait for next relase/revision and do the testing steps again.

Before the upgrade I also make backup of files and databases. Just in case.

 

I closed my shop yesterday and will reopen it on January 1st when Christmas fever is over 🙂

Edited December 11, 2019 by toplakd

[wakabayashi]

28 minutes ago, toplakd said:

I closed my shop yesterday and will reopen it on January 1st when Christmas fever is over

Why so? Are your sales down in this time?

Yeah I completly agree on your tipps. Most merchants use too many modules...

[toplakd]

I ship mostly overseas, and shipping time is so bad during christmass season, that i rather close.
Closing does not affect my sales, as those who want my stuff will wait and buy it in January 🙂

[AndyC]

Any idea on the next update please ... I only ask as I have a few issues which need sorting out which I will need a programming to help with on Panda, mostly merging files as I need tabs. So don't want to have to pay twice.

[wakabayashi]

On 12/1/2019 at 10:28 PM, led24ee said:

I noticed that with ASM there is another weird thing. This on is probably mistake. If You put products on supply order then the first row is reference. This should be product reference, but at the moment this is supply order reference.

I fixed this: https://github.com/thirtybees/thirtybees/pull/1133

Btw: I updated today to newest bleeding edge. Who else did?

[x97wehner]

17 hours ago, wakabayashi said:

I fixed this: https://github.com/thirtybees/thirtybees/pull/1133

Btw: I updated today to newest bleeding edge. Who else did?

Planning to in next few days

 

[Signut]

We have been running Bleeding Edge for 2-3 days and have not found any issues.

[wakabayashi]

Same here. Works pretty well for me until now.

[toplakd]

I updated to Bleeding edge at last week of November, and is running without any problems.

 

[wakabayashi]

Maybe a bit too fast to conclude, but I believe the current bleeding edge version is the most stable version, that 1.6 ps and tb has ever seen! Thanks to all that contributed to this! Especially @Traumflug @datakick and @lesley

[toplakd]

High five to everyone that is contributing to thirty bees.
I needed little longer to migrate to it, but once the Migrator was brought to it's flawles working state (i belive arround 1.0.7 or 1.0.8) the migration was as easy as it gets.

After initial testing on my spare shop instalation, my live shop was now updated to latest bleeding edge.

[x97wehner]

Just updated. Seems to firing better than normal now. No new issues