@bkm Your response is as thoughtful as well as it is insightful and I do appreciate it. Not to even mention your overall contribution to ERPNext. I am in no way discounting @clarkej’s comments or contributions here as his inputs at various times have helped so many… me included. I just felt that his post and reference suggests a different message.
As for reporting issues, I do take time to learn from everyone and every post and try not to raise flags and if I did not feel that the email was a critical bug in the core that needed fixing, I would not flag it; more so as it may have originated from a recent modification of the function. I am already trying to find a way to either fix this issue or implement a workaround. I only just expressed the same frustration that many, including top ERPNext contributors, have expressed about a core function modification breaking an existing function. And I do know that it will be easier to fix the bug if I can understand the reason and depth of the modification in the first place… but this would be a lot easier and faster if handled by the one who modified the function in the first place. This is the crux of my post and nothing else.
I also believe that the core devs should possibly re-organize themselves around how bugs are handled so that the ones that create them are the ones closest to the source and likely the best one to fix them.
That being said… I am still mindful of the stark contrasts found in how this project is supported compared to others that may be similar. While it may not be the most perfect of constructs, it is what they are able to muster and we just need to do our best to work within the framework.
They recently announced a reorganization around how they want to handle new releases and even point releases to give the ongoing addition of new users a more stable platform. I think that while still imperfect, the last release was a moderate step in that direction.
Lastly, thank you for your continuing contributions. Your willingness to jump into the breach and help when the work get tough is recognized by many and appreciated. Likewise, the buildup of frustration can affect all of us. Believe me, I have had entire threads removed from the system by top moderators in the past. I am not one to throw stones here. I have just tried harder to take a deep breath first and make the best of what we have.
Thank you for taking time to respond. It shows integrity that is sometime missing here. I am sure @clarkej will not take offense. He is no better or no worse than the rest of us and I would bet he understands the same frustrations.
To clarify somewhat my “for better or worse” quip , the idea is this - despite all the equity we have invested here and no matter how qualified we might deem ourselves - no licence is required to drive ERPNext.
Kind of like visiting Boston. It is the only city in the world where I feared for my life walking down a sidewalk. A driver there (at midnight mind you) drove up onto the sidewalk half a block away and would have run me down had I not pushed my wife out of the way and jumped out of the way myself. He just continued speeding down the sidewalk.
With not another moving car to be seen anywhere I wondered if the driver had a license.
The story only becomes more frightening when I reveal that it was a Boston police car with no lights on!! (and no, he didn’t stop to see if we were alright)
As a pedestrian, I’ve been most-frightened in Lima, Peru. Humans are simply a variation of “speed bumps” there.
As a passenger, my favorite drive was in Rome. The taxi driver swerved deftly between lanes, across lines, through lights, etc. What made it surreal was he was energetically singing-along to the music from the 1980’s TV show “Fame”.
That is funny. I didn;t even have any trouble walking across the street in downtown Manila, Ph. I was told that was the most dangerous place in the eastern hemisphere but still the jeepnees and the mopeds just go around you there with some elegance compared to the cop car in Boston.
Still funny.
I wish I could get to visit Peru. I really want to visit Machu Picchu.
Clearly, the path is to raise issues for the core, as it is the ultimate destination. However, the whole point is that if the feature was there in the first place, then it was taken out, and someone STILL needs it, arguing over it endlessly might not be desirable, and thus scratching your itch is necessary. Some features will be regionalized, and with any software project this large I hardly believe that users in Germany, or India will benefit fully from a regionalized API application for another country. The whole point is: There are OPTIONS. No one can satisfy everybody all the time. And as a good friend and mentor says: If you focus on exogenous factors you are a victim, but if you focus on the endogenous factors, you are a player. Yes, this is “messy”, but again, ERPNext is powerful in that if the CORE lacks a specific feature, you can develop your own as a custom app. If it will benefit the community, send a pull request for core.
Obviously studying the change is practical for some, but I doubt every business owner has a sophisticated IT department or the time to check for this, whilst some crucial process is not functioning because the user decided to update without checking first. This is why I suggest to err on the side of caution, and do this study a priori (test production server) before commiting to updating on true production.
I also doubt @clarkej meant to be sarcastic, as I also did not intend for it. I am being blunt about my opinion though. Do you really believe we intend this to be “useless” to the end user as you state above? Do you really believe reporting bugs is unappreciative? Do you really believe we promote not pointing issues because the app is free and open source? Quite the contrary. App needs to be useful to all. It already allows for this. Bugs are quite enthusiastically reported as you can see.
@Tropicalrambler I get your point and I understand that ultimately there’s always going to be the dark spot hidden somewhere within a “perfectly white” canvas.
The thing is I honestly didn’t and wouldn’t believe that @clarkej would want to shoot down any complaints. My intention was to highlight what his response suggests as part of a wider conversation about issues: what kind of issues or bugs should be reported, who should report them and who should take responsibility them. I understand and i have accepted that it may not have been his intention and I accept that different statements can mean different things to different people.
Again I insist that I am not in any way unappreciative of everyone in this community: ERPNext is what it is today because hundreds of developers dedicate their time daily to continue to improve the product at their own expense and for the benefit of everyone. I have also seen features come and go since I joined this community and the one time I broke my instance without double-checking changes during an update I openly admitted it and have not made that mistake since.
The issue at hand is a bug in auto email notification for workflows. There was no change log for the alteration made to workflow action In v12.5.0 hence I could not have checked it. The response might be “but you should have checked everything”. But that would mean checking every single code in the application for listed and unlisted changes every time there’s an update. This would be time consuming and expensive, especially if one of the listed changes is supposed to fix a critical issue as was the case with v12.5.0. This is why I voiced my concerns and requested for the developer who introduced the unlisted change to look at the code introduced to find why it broke the function. I am also checking myself and if I am lucky enough to find it, I will highlight it and hopefully someone can implement the fix.
