[cups.general] Issues with 1.4 versions and quality of releases

[Michael Sweet]

On Jul 27, 2010, at 2:18 AM, Petrus Rossouw wrote:
> Hi
> 
> This is a question and general comment about version 1.4.  I don't want to be overly negative or be unappreciative of all the work that went into version 1.4, but so far, the 1.4 version has been very disappointing for me.
> 
> Question:  Can we please get patches for version 1.4.4 (the current released version) for all the "known" bugs, which were pushed and tested against version 1.5?
> There are some bugs which were found in version 1.4.2, but Mike said they are fixed in version 1.5, and no fix was provided for the current or past versions.
> E.g. STR #3470

Unless the bug is duped or already has a perfectly good patch attached to it, you'll find a patch on each bug corresponding to the fix.  In the case of STR #3470 you'll find the patch attached to the master bug, STR #3436.

In any case, the current (stable) code is always available via:

    svn co http://svn.easysw.com/public/cups/branches/branch-1.4 cups-1.4.x

> Reason is that I would like to be able to upgrade to a stable version of 1.4, where most bugs are ironed out, since 1.5 is not released yet.
> In general I think the CUPS developers should at least support 1 major version from a stability perspective, instead of jumping from version to version and continue to introduce more and more bugs.  At least that is the impression I am getting.

First, some required reading that might clear up our "process":

    http://www.cups.org/documentation.php/spec-cmp.html

Basically, all bugs get fixed on trunk (1.5 at present) first, and then those fixes are backported to the current stable release (1.4.x at present).  The only time we'll backport a bug fix to a prior stable release (1.3.x or early at present) is when it is a security bug.

> ...
> Other things I can live with, but should be fixed in my mind for the current released versions are:
> * The CUPS daemon for the maxjobs setting is supposed to clean out both c* and d* files aka the control and the print job files.  Instead it is only cleaning out the control files and leaving the job files in place, causing /var/spool/cups to grow unexpectedly.  (we will use a cron job to clean this out in the meantime)

Please file a bug:

    http://www.cups.org/str.php

I have not seen this personally, and the code that removes the job history also removes the job data files (or at least is supposed to).  I know we had some issues with job history not getting cleared in 1.4.2, but that is resolved in 1.4.4 (STR #3425)

> * There seems to be also some changes to how lpstat behaves, e.g. lpstat -p printername, is supposed to list me the printer's status and any jobs still in the queue.  Instead it is only showing the status.

Um, no.  "-p printername" specifically only shows printer status.  "-o printername" will give you the jobs.

> * Modifying the printer via the new web interface does not allow changing the device path, whereas the old 1.3 versions did

Please test with 1.4.4 or current top-of-tree via Subversion - this definitely works for me, but I know we broke a few pages when we added the CSRF protection.

> *  Listing printers or jobs, have some corruption (special characters or other printable characters) on the pages which should not be there, or it is displaying garbage instead of the correct info.  This is for the english version.

File a bug and include a screenshot.

> * Clicking on the "show all jobs" or "show completed jobs" for a particular printer is completely broken going to an invalid page.

STR #3436.

> For 1.4.2, it shows the jobs for all printers, not just for the particular printer.
> * Simple static pages like the help files have some corruption like when you click on the "Man Pages" link

File a bug and include a screenshot.

> These are just a few things I have found with the latest versions, and it seems that others have found similar and more bugs with the 1.4 version.
> Version 1.5 shows that only 4 bugs has been fixed, so what happened to all the other bugs which were reported for the earlier version and supposedly fixed in 1.5?  I would hope the idea is to fix all known bugs before 1.5 is released!

Clearly I need to somehow clarify the roadmap page...

The "bugs fixed" are those bugs that have been fixed but not committed to 1.4.x. As we approach a 1.4.x release, we enter a "code freeze" stage where we hold low-priority 1.5.x changes temporarily until the 1.4.x release is done.

________________________________________________________________________
Michael Sweet, Senior Printing System Engineer, PWG Chair