New sync system

Jay

Good news (hopefully)!

I built a whole system for displaying logs in the staging version, because the problem only happens in production and I can’t get logs during production. So then with that I logged the status whenever Firebase’s .info/connected status changes. When the app comes back to the foreground it goes offline and then quickly goes online. But sometimes it doesn’t. So it seems like this might be a bug in Firebase, but we’re updated to the latest version so there’s not much I can do there.

So I’ve made a little check that detects it not reconnecting after foregrounding, and forces a reconnect. It seems to be working! But I’ll keep testing it and release a beta update tomorrow. Luckily it’s just in the web code so it doesn’t need a full app update.

SamMarrocco

I’m not familiar with Firebase as I do everything except web code. Hopefully you can get them to fix the bugs. It’s never any fun having to make workarounds for other people bug that you ‘inherit’ (literally, in this case).

Could this somehow be tied to the missing boards that don’t seem in sync between various app instances?

Jay

SamMarrocco The latest update should finally fix this iOS problem! When you bring the app back to the foreground you should see it go offline and then quickly go back online. I’ve been testing it for half a day and it’s reconnected successfully every time. So I’m hoping we’re all good on this now. Please let me know what results you see!

As frustrating as it is to have to do a workaround for someone else’s bug, this one seems to work quite well, so I’m not too worried about it 🙂.

It’s possible that it’s related to missing boards, but I’m not sure. It was in a state where Firebase thought it was online when it actually wasn’t, so that may have caused some other issues… I haven’t seen any board issues myself in a long time. But I will keep an eye on that and keep testing it. If you see any more board issues like that please let me know!

SamMarrocco

Jay Should I use the beta version? I don’t see a new release version since Sept. 26th for either iOS device….?

Jay

SamMarrocco Yes, beta version. I noticed the check for updates button doesn’t seem to be updating to “Restart to update” correctly since the new native app. But if you check for updates and then force restart the app, it should update to the latest. I’ll fix that updating soon.

SamMarrocco

Jay Understood. I’ll update both iOS devices to beta, restart and then hammer them today. Thanks.

SamMarrocco

Jay,

I’ve recorded three webcam videos showing four instances of Legend at once that demonstrate the synchronization issues, board differences and missing items I’ve been discussing with you for the last several days.

The videos are too large for email. Do you have an ftp site to which I can transfer the files for you?

Jay

SamMarrocco Thanks for the videos! That helped me to have some new ideas for trying to reproduce a problem. I reproduced an issue where undoing a delete with a certain timing caused it to not fully save the undelete to the database. I’ve fixed an underlying root cause of that and am continuing to test and see if that fixed the higher level problems.

SamMarrocco

Jay I’m wondering about having some possible troubleshooting/debugging options in SETTINGS such as these:
Perhaps a manner or method of performing “overall synchronization test” where all devices that are currently connected to an account can be scanned, resulting in some type of debugging output as a comma-delimited text file or display, i.e. (forgive the dashes, the forum does not make it easy to align columns with multiple spaces)….

SCAN RESULT:
iOS iPAD————-IOS iPhone—————MacOS——————–Windows———Item ID—————Item Text
192.168.10.1——–192.685.10.2————-192.685.10.5————-192.10.11.14—–1ddEaFF1———— Buy Gas
192.168.10.1——–<NOT PRESENT>——<NOT PRESENT>——–192.10.11.14—–1ddEaFF2————-Sell Car

…etc….

Something like that might make it easier to detect a problem item.
Once that date is mined, it should be trivial to perform a test resulting in the following output:

All Items found on all devices except:

ItemID 1ddEaFF2 (Sell Car) was not found on device(s)

This would make it very simple to locate problem items when troublshooting.

Also, having an option in Settings/Display that would enable showing “Total Children” for each item in the outline documents would be helpful for detecting missing sub items, and in:

Fred (1)
- Pebbles (0)
Barney (1)
- BamBam (0)

Just some thoughts.

Jay

SamMarrocco I just released an update which I believe should fix the bug with items being desynchronized. It cannot automatically fix the symptom though, so if you just move the THURSDAY item to be a child of a different item and then back, it should fix it and make it sync correctly.

I’m not sure what of your actions triggered a bug, but I tried every crazy thing I could think of and just typed randomly like a madman, and found that making a change to an item within milliseconds of a different change to that item, it could sync unpredictably. So if you had deleted that item and then undid it, or edited it and then moved it to a different document, within about 1.5s to 1.55s of each other, it could have failed to sync correctly.

There were also a few bugs with undoing moving items between documents, so it’s possible that’s what caused it?

I’ve been testing every wild idea I can think of for how to break it for days and can’t find anything else. If you see anything get de-synced again, please let me know! And if you can remember anything about the actions you did before the de-sync, that would be super helpful! But I am very confident in the sync now. I really can’t figure out how to break it anymore.

And a huge thank you for all your patience and making videos and everything! It helps so much ❤️

SamMarrocco

Jay
Thanks, I’ll test that out right away.
Should I use Beta or release?

Jay

SamMarrocco Beta. If all is good with this update (and I’ll keep testing it more tonight) I’ll update release tomorrow.

SamMarrocco

Is release now updated with all the beta fixes for iOS? if so, I’ll switch to release and continue testing.

Jay

SamMarrocco Yes it is.

Jay

Since it’s been over a month since the last reported sync problem, I think we’re all good now 🥳🥳🥳. So I’ll mark this thread as solved. But please let me know if any more issues pop up - sync being perfect will always be the #1 priority.

SamMarrocco

Will do!

Jerud

After a couple weeks of stable performance I got brave and reinstalled the mobile app. Have not yet hit any sync issues with it! It really helps to have access to my docs while away from home!

Whatever you did also partially-fixed another issue: Legend would always get stuck on a blank white screen if I switched away from the app and then switched back using the app switcher. I would have to force-quit and relaunch every time I wanted to resume use.

After all these sync fixes, it only gets stuck about every 3rd or 4th time. Obviously it’d be nice if it never got stuck – it’s the only app I’ve ever had this problem with. Perhaps the fact that it got better after the sync changes provides a clue as to why it’s happening?

SamMarrocco

Jerud,
I’ve seen a similiar “white screen” issues on both Windows and MacOS when using electron or other ‘web-wrapped’ applications as they ‘pretend’ to be native.

I’ve come to believe that most of this is the app’s inability to detect a ‘refresh event’ for the form, as when something covers the form or a drawing routine needs updating on the screen. I’m not sure what Legend uses for that purpose, but I’d be willing to be a couple dollars that it’s related to whatever that ‘web-wrapper’ is that they all have in common.

Disclaimer: I have a bit of a personal thing about ‘wrapped’ code and web-apps instead of natively written code for applications, but it mainly stems from a personal hatred of web applications in general. It’s my cross to bear 😉

Jerud

Nice to know there’s a likely reason that’s not just limited to Legend – but the fact that it now happens only ‘sometimes’ rather than all the time implies to me that it’s fixable.

While this probably isn’t a huge deal for many users, Legend always seems to pull this move when I’m in a rush and have crappy cell signal, so I’m sitting there waiting for a full quit/launch/reload docs cycle on 3G just so I can see what I already had on my screen a few seconds before I switched away from the app to check on some email verification or whatever.

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