We just deployed a new point upgrade to rehash today to fix a bunch of small bugs that have been with us since the rehash upgrade and a few that were around longer than that. Here are the highlights:
- Fixes for various XSS isues by adding strip_title where appropriate in output templates.
- Fix PollBooth for Nexus support (found the bugs when cleaning up XSS issues).
- Fix broken daily mails by removing a utf decode that was unneeded since mod_perl 2 is better with utf8.
- Comment links now link to the the commentwrap div just above the comment.
- Commentwrap div's 'Reply' button now has verbage based on if we are on the story or on a specific comment.
- Add cert store location to Subscribe code to get rid of LWP errors and allow PayPal subscriptions to complete.
- Fix missing hit counts by adding accesslog back in (for editors and admins).
- Fix for unordered singoffs in story edit page (for editors and admins).
- Fix broken block save in admin.pl by setting defaults for not null table update (for admins).
We were able to kill off about 10 high priority bugs with this mini release. Current issues and feature requests can be found on GitHub and you can submit new issues or feature requests here if you have a GitHub account. We also welcome bugs and requests sent via email to admin@soylentnews.org or left in the comments below.
Our goals for the next major update is more of the same bug hunting and killing with a few features added here and there. Again I would like to thank you for your patience with the growing pains we have had with the 15_05 rehash upgrade. This update should bring us mostly back to where we were before in terms of broken features.
(Score: 2) by tynin on Tuesday June 16 2015, @09:47PM
I LOL'd.
Nice round of fixing and show of effort to get things back to sailing smoothly so quickly. Still, I wish you all better luck and making future releases more seamless if only for your own sanity. :)
(Score: 4, Informative) by paulej72 on Tuesday June 16 2015, @10:04PM
We basically decide that we were never going to get rehash out the door if we waited to test and debug. Most of the major issues did not show up under the light load of the dev server and would have passed any additional testing we may have done. Also there seems like we have some schema differences between our dev db and production db. This also led to a few issues.
NCommander plans to work on getting some unit tests built for each of our Perl modules and files. Once completed this should help with keeping the bug count down. As part of this we will also be killing off some more dead and dying code in rehash. This will make it easier to keep the code up-to-date and bug-free.
Team Leader for SN Development
(Score: 2) by goodie on Wednesday June 17 2015, @01:55PM
RE: differences between dev and prod dbs: How did this happen? Didn't you test by taking a backup of prod and putting it in dev running only those scripts that were for the new version? Anyway, a good diff tool for database might come in handy for the future to check whether differences exist before doing the upgrade. My old company had SQL Compare for MSSQL, which could even generate a convert script one way or the other. For MySQL, looks like there is some stuff built-in too: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql-utilities/1.3/en/mysqldbcompare.html [mysql.com] (not sure about the version). Or a simple script that compares two databases' catalogs could do that for you if you have basic objects only.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by paulej72 on Wednesday June 17 2015, @05:15PM
The current dev database is a copy of the production db from around last year at this time. Since then we have added vars and made schema changes as needed to provide for new features and bug fixes. These changes are supposed to be written to the sql/mysql/upgrades file to then be applied to production at the next deploy of the code. The problem arises when someone makes a change to the db but fails to add the change into the upgrades file. So we have both schema differences and some vars in the configuration table that are slightly different.
What we will probably do soonish is take another dump of the prod db and put it on dev to give us the same db again. Or we might just dump the schemas on both and do a diff.
Team Leader for SN Development
(Score: 2) by goodie on Thursday June 18 2015, @01:22PM
Thanks for the info! Maybe running a diff before upgrades could help if you have a code freeze period where you can validate those things. Because I imagine that it's the same type of issue that can arise with server configs etc. since none of that stuff is "built" and therefore fails to compile etc.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday June 17 2015, @07:39PM
Maybe I just haven't been paying attention, but I haven't noticed any bugs or annoyances. I do have a suggestion, though. This would do me no help since I never log in on my phone, but I was curious and looked at the site on it. You really should make it mobile-friendly. It isn't hard using CSS (I don't on my site... much) and you can test it here. [google.com]
Google now reduces pagerank for sites not mobile-ready. Despite the fact that I get almost no traffic from Google, my stats say that before I changed the code, very few people were reading on a phone or tablet. Now half my traffic is.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by paulej72 on Wednesday June 17 2015, @07:52PM
That has been on our todo list for a long time, even though it is not listed as an issue on GitHub we are well aware of it. Our Chief QA man martyb uses a phone for internet access and has mentioned many mobile browser related bugs.
Team Leader for SN Development
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 18 2015, @07:44AM
But please, refrain from making separate URLs for a mobile version. Such separate URLs are a PITA because you can bet that the URL you get is typically not the one appropriate for the system you're on. It sucks to view a mobile-only-optimized page on a big 1920x1080 screen.
(Score: 2) by paulej72 on Thursday June 18 2015, @12:52PM
Well it also sucks to get stuck on the mobile version without having a way to set it desktop view the way some responsive layout systems work. I like responsive layouts, but it would be nice to be able to set a cookie that allows the user to turn it off. My phone screen may be small, but it is high resolution so can handle a full desktop version if needed.
Team Leader for SN Development
(Score: 2) by juggs on Thursday June 18 2015, @05:02AM
Indeed so. Any volunteers with QA/Test experience would be most welcome, don't sit on the sidelines, get involved.
To be fair, rehash deployment was a major^2 step. Given our skeleton crew there were bound to be gotchas, we simply do not have the resources to iron everything out in dev / staging right now.
The rapid march of point releases we have seen since rehash deployment attests to the commitment that the developers have.
slashcode to rehash was always going to be a breaking change as it touched on every underlying platform. It's done now and we have a current codebase and platform to work from. Sure there are regressions to deal with, but this was a sand or stone foundation choice, one better made sooner than later. Despite the recent brief site instability, it was the right way to go.
/my opinion off
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Tuesday June 16 2015, @10:39PM
Nice work once again. Some may think it sounds bad to be back where we were, but if maintainability is increased, it's a big improvement. It's appreciated.
(Score: 2) by paulej72 on Tuesday June 16 2015, @10:47PM
We do have some nice features we have added, but I was mostly taking about the few key features that broke from the upgrade itself. I believe we have them all fixed, except some long queries that only get called a few times a day. It seem like every time we do an upgrade we add a few more issues to the list with some of them stuff that was also broken before the upgrade.
Team Leader for SN Development
(Score: 4, Informative) by NCommander on Tuesday June 16 2015, @11:16PM
The only remaining "feature" thats broken is memcache. We still have no idea why it craps itself under high load, but the new cluster arrangement seems to scale well enough that the site doesn't turn into confetti with removing it. I'm going to be writing a NC novel on what we're doing to fix it sometime this week.
Still always moving
(Score: 5, Insightful) by prospectacle on Tuesday June 16 2015, @11:38PM
I expect you all have jobs and/or lives and/or families, which makes the time and effort you put into continually improving this place all the more impressive.
For a news and comment source I enjoy every day and with such a cheap yearly subscription, it's very greatly appreciated.
Makes me think I really should contribute content more often.
If a plan isn't flexible it isn't realistic
(Score: 3, Touché) by paulej72 on Tuesday June 16 2015, @11:43PM
I pay not in money, but in blood, sweat, and tears. Thanks for the compliment.
Team Leader for SN Development
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2015, @10:27AM
Is the blood in order to get the red colour of the decorations? ;-)
Anyway, great work.
However let me annotate one minor thing that IIRC already was on the green site, but each time I see it (which includes right now) it strikes me as odd:
When replying to a post, that post has a "Reply to This" button, which is rather pointless, since that's what I'm currently doing. I think that button can be safely removed.
What would be occasionally useful while replying is a "Parent" button on posts with a parent; however that's probably more complicated to add, and it's still possible to get at the parent with just one more click (namely on the comment number).
(Score: 2) by cmn32480 on Wednesday June 17 2015, @12:27AM
We welcome any and all content contributions.
A great place to start is the Submission Guidelines [soylentnews.org].
"It's a dog eat dog world, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear" - Norm Peterson
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2015, @12:54AM
I'm using a Mozilla browser (Pale Moon 20.3).
I have it configured for "stealth" usage. The only thing true about me is my IP address; all other identifying features are false, spoofed or randomly changed; this includes: User Agent, Referer, Accept Headers, JS OCPU Strings, ETAG headers, Proxy Headers, etc.
I have stopped visiting SoylentNews.org since a few weeks ago because all I get is the "500 Internal Server Error" page when browsing with my "stealth" configuration. This did not happen before the recent site changes. My stealth config works fine with all other websites (I care about visiting).
I am not going to whitelist or make exceptions for any website, therefore I have stopped visiting soylentnews.org and spend my time elsewhere.
It's a pity because I liked coming here.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by NCommander on Wednesday June 17 2015, @01:55AM
Post how to replicate and we can try to fix it
Still always moving
(Score: 4, Funny) by coolgopher on Wednesday June 17 2015, @12:54AM
Do you reckon you could expose these "unordered singoffs" to us users so we get to listen in? Maybe we can get arias with our articles in Arial? ;)
Jokes aside, thanks for your hard work.
(Score: 3, Informative) by GungnirSniper on Wednesday June 17 2015, @04:53AM
The 'Reply' button at the bottom of the page and 'Reply to this' buttons work but not the 'Reply to Article' one below the summary.
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by paulej72 on Wednesday June 17 2015, @10:49AM
Sorry about that. I thought I only changed the text. I'll look into it today.
Team Leader for SN Development
(Score: 2) by paulej72 on Wednesday June 17 2015, @10:54AM
Well, my fault for not testing enough. The button is a submit button and by changing the value of the button, I changed the value sent as the 'op' for the comments Perl code. I just need to change this to a normal link and it will work again.
Team Leader for SN Development
(Score: 3, Informative) by paulej72 on Wednesday June 17 2015, @03:41PM
It is now fixed.
Team Leader for SN Development
(Score: 2) by pkrasimirov on Wednesday June 17 2015, @07:27AM
Great. Can you update now dev.soylentnews.org ?
(Score: 2) by paulej72 on Wednesday June 17 2015, @11:20AM
Dev is always updated before production for all but the most trivial changes. Right now it is just missing a quick fix for broken bold tag.
Team Leader for SN Development
(Score: 1) by AnonymousCowardNoMore on Thursday June 18 2015, @03:13PM
I've been getting the feeling that I can't always find articles again but now I'm pretty sure I'm not imagining things. For example, I can't open the article "Pope Affirms Anthropogenic Global Warming" [soylentnews.org] which I posted on previously. I don't see anything related on Github. Have others been experiencing this problem, or am I holding it wrong?