I have used pencil2D a small amount, and looked around on the forums quite a bit. What happended for me and seems to happen to a lot of people is stability issues. For example trying to use sound makes the application crash more often. The thing is when it crashes nothing indicates why, nothing pops up and says:
I would think this would help the developers fix the issues that many seem to be having with the program by giving them an idea of where the error or crash occurred.
Pencil2D is in a beta phase, that means it’s unstable as you have noticed. Sound does not work at this moment, our devs are trying to fix critical bugs that affect stability, but sound is not a priority because Pencil2D was thought as a “pencil test” program in it’s first stages. In here we’re picking up the breadcrumbs and trying to improve it in every way.
Everyone is aware of the problems except new users, so I can only apologize for the inconvenience and ask you to be a little patient meanwhile there is a new, more stable release.
Your suggestion is actually really nice, I don’t think people have suggested that before, but I would too think this would help, but I don’t know how people can implement it, let us ask.
@feeef@chchwy@derek_saif Guys, do you think it’s hard to implement a “report bugs” form that pops up after pencil2D has crashed? so it will provide you with important information that can be used to fix the program?
I think there should be a disclaimer next to the download links, and maybe a link to the Github issues where users can create new issues/bugs.
Granted this means of bug reporting is not visceral or anonymous.
I think that more important than error codes are the steps to reproduce the error, which is something that would take time to implement satisfactorily if even at all.
I think the freecad developers/user base (a package that I use alot) has been at this for a while and has got bug thing down pretty good. The bleeding edge master branch tends to be pretty stable.
I been poking around the pencil2d code as well as doing a little reading about the projects history. The original developer stopped and the project forked in different directions. My understanding is the best of fragmented projects has been brought together but not all components are playing nice with each other yet. Some objects that got a little big and complicated have been re-factored into something more manageable.
Sometimes you need to slow down into order to speed up. Since Christmas vacation is over and I don’t as much free time to code contribute, I’ve trying to contribute by loading the latest master branch and attempting to break the application just doing basic stuff… Loading, File new, save as, and file open and trying basic stuff sticking to the pencil, bitmap mode. Once these basic core functions get stabilized, the more advance stuff will get going faster I think because more developers will get drawn in interested in extending functionality. (Part of of this is self interest…, My daughter has expressed in learning to animate, but she’s getting frustrated by the bugs )
If I run across something that I think is a bug, I try do a little research on the github issue list. You might not have time, but wasting a Developers by not doing a little basic homework is not cool either. If you’re unsure ask on the forum before submitting a issue on github.
I try to report a single issue on a single bug report(unless they’re inner related)
Instead of a custom error message as DeviousPulsar suggests, perhaps we could have a startup message with a link to a forum topic indicating which areas are currently unstable and which sections which are the current section being being worked on, as well as areas that developers think are fixed but could use intensive user testing.
Users tend do weird things that never occur to a developer and can find bugs quicker than a developer without even trying. The irony of that is that user often just accept the problem and work around it without mentioning it. It’s really helpful to a developer to find these bugs early while that section of code is still fresh in the developers mind and it’s not a big deal to fix.
Using the GitHub to report bugs would be a great thing to do, I just didn’t know we had one.
You know those pop up windows that tell you what an application can do, when you open in up? We should use one of those to tell people which things are being worked on, and what things work well, or don’t work well.
What do you mean by steps to reproduce the error? What does that include? Would that be a coding thing or a workflow thing?
The purpose of the error messages is to point the developers at the problem, to give them a general idea of where the error is. That way they can fix the error easier, assuming they can reproduce it.
Generally if an application crashes you generally get that that sort of message. The typical bug situation now is sort of like a electrical problem in you car that you don’t get an error code off the ODBC, You really need to hunt and test to figure out whats going on. (A joke among mechanics is ask the customer how much do they want to spend to fix this) A huge amount of time trying to figure out what the issue is to be fixed by a line or two of code.
Steps to reproduce the error is just that… The developer needs to be able to have the same thing happen to him/her so the bug can be isolated and fixed.
Showing screen shots is helpful. If you can succinctly you can describe what the problem is the easier it will be for the developer to find the problem.