[Qgis-developer] QGIS 2 64bits, is it stable ?

[Paolo Cavallini]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Il 03/10/2013 21:19, Vincent Picavet ha scritto:

> And another +1. It's time to focus on code quality to reduce bugs and 

sure, we all agree on this.

> maintainance costs, for which it is always difficult to find funding.
> We need more unit test, more code quality dashboards and much stricter rules 
> relative to what code has to be accepted into master.

I think this is a matter of balance: a large part of QGIS success is due to the huge
number of new functions and developers that keep on coming. Setting up to srtict
rules will dry up our main source.

> A PostgreSQL-like code inclusion workflow, with commitfest and review, could be 
> something interested, to be discussed.

IMHO a desktop program is a totally different beast from a server one. Unit testing
for atomic functions is relatively easy, it can be a nightmare when you have very
complex user interactions.

IMHO our main problem is sheer lack of resources: to work properly, we would need at
least 3 full time, paid persons:
* one for bugfixing and patch reviewing
* one for QA and unit testing
* one for infrastructure.
With 1M+ users, many local and central governments relying on our code, this seems a
reasonable requirement/goal.
Until we have this, I'm afraid all the rest will be largely speculative.

> On the funding side, for information, public administrations, at least in 
> france, cannot pay for a time based contract. Estimating how much time a bug 
> fix could take is a really hard task (except if you fixed the bug already). This 
> is a problem both for company willing to fix bug for paid contracts and for 
> public administrations wanting to finance bugs, and can explain the funding 
> situation related to maintainance and bugfixing.

Yes, this is a crucial problem: I'm sure many people would be happy to pay for their
most annoying bug, if they knew how much would this cost, but as you described,
estimating the cost is about the same as fixing it.
We (Faunalia) solve this by proposing support contracts, with a fixed number of hours
for bugfixing, that can be used on demand. Possibly not the ideal solution, but it
works, both from a technical and from an administrative point of view.

All the best.
- -- 
Paolo Cavallini - Faunalia
www.faunalia.eu
Full contact details at www.faunalia.eu/pc
Nuovi corsi QGIS e PostGIS: http://www.faunalia.it/calendario
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.14 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Icedove - http://www.enigmail.net/

iEYEARECAAYFAlJOXT0ACgkQ/NedwLUzIr76jQCdG9hWip28xvjnJlfqSJEirn2c
bUIAoJvBsUP4unmfJnvEkc8PHYrJMGqY
=Bj3n
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----