Unsettling issues in Stable

webalstrom

I was reading over the issues @Jerud and @Jorge are having and thinking to myself “Oh this hasn’t happened to me!” Then I started taking a closer look at my documents and finding they are all messed up. Items in my INBOX that I moved from there a LONG time ago have reappeared. Items in other documents are rearranging themselves. At one point it looked like all my current todos in one of my lists were gone. I closed down the stable Windows app. I checked the stable online web app. I peeked inside (using Incognito mode) the beta online app. Things were all messed up.

Reopened the Windows app and suddenly the missing things have reappeared. I moved back the items that reappeared in my INBOX to where they were moved whenever that was (between a couple weeks and a month or more ago). Reopened the stable online app. Some of the items I moved from the INBOX were showing still in the INBOX in the web app but not there in the Windows app. Refreshed the webpage. Still in the wrong place.

At this point, I’m not sure I can trust Legend to keep my data safe. I don’t think I’ve lost anything, but there’s a lot in there and at one point, it sure looked like it was lost. It definitely is moving it around on it’s own (or reverting back to old versions of the document). This is a very unsettling feeling when I trust Legend to hold all this info I can’t keep in my head!

Again, this is in the Stable version. I haven’t used the beta (except for the occasional peek in Incognito) since the new sync system started giving us headaches about a month ago. I can give more details (like what I was seeing in Version History) if needed.

Jerud

Yes, it is unsettling. @Jay may be correct in pointing out that Legend doesn’t delete data on its own and therefore true “data loss” is not possible. But “losing” data – as in, it’s there but you can’t find it – is almost as bad as deleting it, and if the info is time-sensitive it can’t be exactly the same as deleting it.

An important use case for me is “I’ll put this here so I see and remember it when I need it”. Items that get stashed like that, I won’t even know if they’re missing, because I can’t go looking for something I’ve forgot.

Seeing old stuff resurface does not foster confidence in this arena. In the end, I’m still better off than I was without Legend, even if it “loses” half my stuff – because I’m a total nincompoop. But this is a major contributing factor in the “I love Legend but would never reccommend it to a friend” problem.

Fool that I am, I am cautiously optimistic about this recent change in the sync system. I was seeing zombie items respawn and move a LOT whenever I used the mobile app, so much so that I stopped using it interactively. My mobile app is essentially a “read only” dashboard because doing anything short of completing an item always led to mis-syncs. Hopefully things are on the mend…once we get through the friction in beta.

Jay

Yes, the sync issues in the stable version are the main reason for the new sync system in beta. “Stable” is a bit of a misnomer - it’s stable in that it doesn’t update as often, but there are bugs we’re working on fixing in beta.

One of the major changes is that items were referred to solely by ID, but then moving them to another document retains that ID (so that links/mirrors still work) and would mark the old ones as “moved”. But then moving items back and forth caused some strange bugs, sometimes it could only complete part of a move, and sometimes old moved items would pop back up in the old location. The new system refers to items by document+itemID and does moves in a much better way, so that should be fixed.

As Jerud said, the data can’t be lost because it doesn’t actually “delete” anything. It marks items as deleted or moved, and then they’re not shown. So the data is there but some bug may be causing it to not display.

The beta also caches to a folder when using the desktop app, so it’s much easier to back up that folder yourself, just in case anything happens.

The main goal of the new beta sync system is to be 100% correct with sync. I’m using the beta version myself and am trying to stress test it in every way I can think of, and it’s holding up. A lot of the remaining issues now are finding and repairing issues in documents that were caused by old bugs, like the latest update fixes items marked as “moved” incorrectly. I’m planning to focus 100% on sync stability until it’s perfect.

Jorge

I for one need to move out of using stable urgently because the bugs it has are intolerable for me. But the beta had proven to be unusable so far.

I understand there are times where major architectural changes have to be done in software, but when those are done we shouldn’t be rolling them out as fast as we have in the past. I think those major changes that have disrupting potential should be rolled out to an alpha group for a few weeks, and only when that small group thinks it’s is working perfectly, then should they be released to a beta stream.

This last sync system change was extremely necessary, but stabilizing it has taken an agonizing 3-4 months now. I think it was September when those board issues started appearing. The priority for me has to be making beta usable so that people can properly test it, and so far this hasn’t happened. Only when a decent poll of beta users agree then should we move this beta to stable. It is to risky so far. If @Jay had decided to release this beta to stable I would have dropped out of Legend out of the inability to use it. Right now I feel between a rock and a hard place because neither stable nor beta are satisfactory to use

Jay

I think the beta version is getting very close to if not already usable as of the last update. But we will absolutely wait until beta users are reporting that there are no remaining bugs and it’s ready.

I agree that we should have started the new sync system in an alpha version, and if we do any major changes like this in the future (though we have no such plans) I think we will do that. There had been so many reports of sync bugs in the stable version that I felt a lot of pressure to release a fix ASAP. It had been working fine on my data so I thought it was ready, but I hadn’t properly considered the wide variety of other peoples’ data. I’d taken great pains to ensure it wouldn’t break any document data, but wasn’t as careful as I should have been with protecting board data…

I’ve learned a lot of lessons!

I think the latest version should at this point be more stable than the stable version, but we’re still hitting it with everything we can think of to try to break (and fix) it so I can’t say that with full certainty yet. I’m running the Mac app and browser side by side, and on my Android phone, to check for any inconsistencies. It’s been working great with no issues for me for at least the past week. This latest update makes it run on my test account with @Jorge’s (encrypted) data with no issues. Jorge’s data is always an extreme edge case so that seems very promising to me.

Jerud

@Jay I will take another run at the beta and hopefully things will go better this time. I’ve got a little lull coming up next week where I can afford to experiment.

Your struggle sounds painfully familiar. I’ve been building my project (in the physical world, not code, but it’s still big and hairy) for a couple years now and I never seem to run out of new obstacles and overlooked caveats!