[Qgis-developer] Quality assurance (was: Georeferencer produces wrong (shifted) result)

[Germán Carrillo]

I agree with Agustin.

Here in my University, QGIS is seen as a 'buggy' software, so some
professors and lecturers are not considering it anymore and are choosing
proprietary software for the exercises. In such a scenario there is nothing
a promoter of FOSS4G (and specially QGIS) like me can do to revert things.

I myself stopped installing each QGIS new version in my laptop because I
know there are lots of bugs I don't want to deal with, so I stuck to a
version I know works in a predictable way. I've also reported some bugs but
nothing seems to happen with the report after a while and that discourages
users like me. For me it seems that the bug doesn't care anyone, not even
the author of the module/plug-in. I remember some time ago I enjoyed fixing
small bugs in the QGIS Table of contents (TOC) but it turned out the TOC
was totally changed afterwards (by the way, I find annoying to move layers
in this new TOC.)

I think you already suggested something like an ongoing contest of bug
fixes. I thing this simple thing could encourage people to visit the bug
tracker and see what they can fix. Of course, I don't know whether you have
enough time to arrange it.

Just my 2 cents.

Regards,

Germán

2011/12/17 Agustin Lobo <alobolistas at gmail.com>

> I agree with Paolo and furthermore think that taking action is urgent:
> qgis has a serious risk of getting the label of "unreliable tool" and
> that label will be very difficult to overcome afterwards.
> I personally confess I feel uncomfortable every time I use it for a
> course because you never know
> what bugs the students are going to find. This last time has worked
> quite well (except on Macs, where
> it has shown to be very unstable), but thanks to the fact that I
> realized the error in georeferencing before the class and
> skipped that exercise. Otherwise, can you imagine the opinion of the
> students towards qgis after
> getting the result shown earlier in this thread? On the other hand,
> styling of rasters is so insufficient that I have to use other
> software to explain the parts related to operations through histogram.
>
> I personally think that if we are a sufficient number of users willing
> to act as testers we should start doing it right now, not waiting for
> the result of discussions any more.We should consider all releases of
> qgis as RC for us and publish the results of
> our testing as soon as we can after the release. The rest of users
> will decide upon our results.  I understand the interest of many
> developers is having qgis as a test bed and not a producing
> environment and I respect that point of view that makes possible that
> so many improvements and new tools become widely distributed, but
> users requiring a reliable tool must have a tested software with a
> clear summary of the operational problems they will face.
>
> Agus
>
>
> 2011/12/16 Paolo Cavallini <cavallini at faunalia.it>:
> > Il 16/12/2011 18:53, Werner Macho ha scritto:
> >
> >> I dont think we need a Release Candidate cycle - From my point that will
> >> bring only more "confuse" into the release cycle..
> >
> > So why most respected and established projects follow this route?
> > Now QGIS is used very widely in professional contexts, and releasing
> supposedly
> > stable packages with nasty regressions (as it is happening) brings no
> good to our
> > users and reputation.
> > I think our QA approach should improve, one way or another.
> > All the best.
> > --
> > Paolo Cavallini - Faunalia
> > www.faunalia.eu
> > Full contact details at www.faunalia.eu/pc
> > _______________________________________________
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