[MonoTouch] Do the makers of Monodevelop actually test the application?

[Jeff Stedfast]

Hi Dermotos,

On Mon, Oct 24, 2011 at 3:48 AM, dermotos <me at dermotos.com> wrote:

> Ive been using Monodevelop for about 10 months now, and it just seems to be
> getting worse and worse.
>

I *hope* that's not actually the case, we're working hard to make things
better :-(


>
> The amount of obvious errors seen from using the program for about 10
> minutes suggests there isnt any real formal testing performed on the
> application. I understand that Mono is an open source initiative, however
> Monotouch is not. Its $400 a year. Its the most money I spend on software,
> certainly on a yearly basis. I dont think its fair to paying customers for
> quality assurance to be so overlooked. Each time i mention a bug I get
> asked
> to file a bug report. This would normally be fine, however Im a paying
> customer. I feel like im doing more testing than the monodevelop testing
> team, if such a thing even exists.


> Im all for promoting Monotouch, but with the current state of Monodevelop,
> the developers cant expect this Development framework to be taken
> seriously.
>
> Sorry if this sounds like a rant. But i've been spending the last 20
> minutes
> trying to debug on my phone with no luck. Im sure you can appreciate my
> frustration as I encounter a similar battle EACH and EVERY time I try to
> debug my app. Each time, something different has happened. DWP Handshake
> failed... Lost connection to device... flat out not connecting, debugging
> stopping randomly, MonoDevelop "Unhandled Exceptions" when my own code hits
> a bug, hiding the actualy bug in my code from being debugged, Monodevelop
> fatal errors/crashes. Mixed in with that are glaring UI focusing bugs, and
> a
> benign (but still a bug) case where my cursor turns into an "upward"
> direction arrow.
>

I completely understand your frustration and I'm very very sorry that these
debugging issues have been biting you. You have every right to be frustrated
and annoyed.

You have been very patient and helpful in submitted bugs so far and I (and
I'm sure the other Xamarin developers) take your issues very seriously. I
can only hope that our efforts in trying to resolve these issues as quickly
as possible proves that we care. I'm not very knowledgeable when it comes to
the debugger, so I will have to defer to the developers at Xamarin who are.
If you can point me at bug reports in bugzilla or send me an email detailing
the bugs you hinted at above, I would be more than happy to pass along these
issues to the appropriate developers to try and make sure they get fixed as
quickly as possible.

I know that a number of customers have been having issues with USB
debugging, so Rolf and I (mostly Rolf) have added WiFi debugging support
back into MonoDevelop for the upcoming 2.8.2 release. I don't know if this
will solve any of the bugs you are seeing, but if you think it would, I
would be happy to get my hands on an internal prerelease build of
MonoDevelop 2.8.2 and upload it to someplace that would allow you to get a
copy of it to try out to see if it helps. Just let me know and I'll make it
happen.



>
> Is the development team actively testing Monodevelop prior to release, or
> do
> they just sit back and wait for the paying users* to report bugs for them?


>
> *Im aware Monodevelop is free and used by free users, however it is the IDE
> for Monotouch, which is paid for.
>

Agreed, which is why we have been increasing our efforts on improving
MonoDevelop and have more than doubled the size of the team in the past few
months. We've also contracted out a QA team to continually pound away at
MonoDevelop (as well as MonoTouch and Mono for Android). I'll send an email
to our QA team and suggest they increase the priority on the debugging
aspects of MonoDevelop.


Again, I apologize for your frustrations and will do everything I can to
make sure these issues get resolved.

Jeff




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