XSF Discussion - 2022-07-04

It's just unfathomable to me how people can use a client without mam. Let alone an entire messenger like irc. Like, do they really sit online 24/7 or come to terms with the fact they may outright lose messages mentioning them or just some important info?

kurisu: every IRC user uses a bouncer

Which is a terrible but provides basically mam

Isn't a bouncer something you have to set up yourself

Or use one someone else runs for you, a lot of IRC networks even run them nowadays

I use MAM vey lightly. One-on-one messages that I missed are delivered through offline message storage, and missed MUC history is typically so old that it is barely relevant most of the time.

kurisu, it is, then people pay for something like irccloud so that someone does it for them.

> I use MAM vey lightly. One-on-one messages that I missed are delivered through offline message storage, Doesn't that work for one device only

But I also don’t use MAM myself, my client stays online since it runs on the same computer as my server, so it never misses messages.

And I connect to it using ssh and tmux.

just like in good ol' IRC times

Personally i just embrase the ephemeral nature of irc 🤷‍♂️

I only use irc via xmpp transport. My biggest use of xmpp btw

Especially in slower channels. I may sometimes wait for days for a reply. Staying online for days to maybe get a reply is insane. So is setting up your own server, just to receive a message.

kurisu: I'm interested in that attribute error you're getting with Gajim. please join xmpp:gajim@conference.gajim.org?join or post it here :)

wurstsalat, I was about to post it, launched gajim to do it, and now it's no longer there :)

kurisu: which version are you running?

wurstsalat: latest archlinux gajim 1.4.5-2

kurisu: thanks

I get a stack trace literally every time I start gajim, and normally several times while using it. It would be really nice if there was a way to report them from within the interface without having to sign up for an account on a thing only used for gajim dev or figure out how to install sentry (which won't be something non-devs can do, plus it doesn't exist in my distro)

Telemetry would be very useful for all of our projects, too bad users would get very angry at that idea.

Sam: how do you mean "install sentry"?

Well Conversations proposes to send stuff to a JID, it's not exactly perfect but it's not such a bad idea. No need to create yet another account to some platform

I just log into the gajim tracker with my GitHub account. One click easy. But I never run bleeding edge so their tracker is the wrong place to report my bugs

It doesn't have to be background telemetry, just when it gives me a stack trace have a button to optionally send it to someone.

I would definitely prefer using forms over messages but..

> ### Optional Runtime Requirements > - python3-sentry-sdk for Sentry error reporting to dev.gajim.org (users decide whether to send reports or not) This sounds a bit like a packaging problem?

singpolyma: it says something about installing sentry in the ui to report bugs. I assume it means a sentry python upload thing, I forget how sentry works.

Oh ok, so not install *sentry* just install the python lib. I didn't know that was supported! I should definitely add it if my version supports

Oh yah, that. Apparently it's an optional thing that doesn't exist on fedora.

The "optional" part being the main problem (though I get that it's technically true)

Sam: could file whatever fedora's equivalent of a RFP bug is?

I don't know what that means

Lots of gajim deps are optional :)

But probably not

The whole point is that I shouldn't have to know dev stuff to report an issue

Installing deps isn't really "dev stuff"?

It's the same as how you have to install deps for A/V to work

The fact that fedora doesn't have the package is an issue of course, but an issue with fedora not with gajim

Sure it is. I just installed a shiny messenger from the software center, I don't know what this python-omemo thing is or how to install it from the command line (or even that it's the unmentioned thing that will magically make the lock icon not be grey, it's not mentioned anywhere after all)

I'm in agreement that it's partially fedoras fault too, but gajim also makes it optional

If you have to install it from the command line that is also fedora's fault

Doesn't matter where you have to install it from

Ideally it would be a checkbox when you install the app

Sure, that would be way better

I'm not suggesting it's impossible to solve, just that all distros and gajim do it badly.

Optional stuff is just needlessly confusing in general.

So every application should pull telemetry dependencies non-optionally?

I honestly don't see how it's related to gajim at all

I didn't say that

As I said, it sounds like a packaging problem.

If they wanted it to be non optional fedora could also do that. Just because gajim doesn't crash when it's not present that's not a bad thing

Sam, that's kind of where I see this going. I agree it's good to make it easier for users but where should we put the line

If gajim made eg. Omemo or sentry for reporting required distros would just work. If they see it as optional obviously they're not going to do extra work to support it. Sure, the problem could be solved from either direction, but I think that means there is a good argument that it's equally gajims responsibility to make sure their users have a good experience.

Looks like there is a package, but very new. https://packages.fedoraproject.org/pkgs/python-sentry-sdk/python3-sentry-sdk/

Put another wsy: Distro packagers have lots to do, they're not an expert in every single thing they package, so they're going to miss the optional bits. It's up to gajim to help them out.

Sam, it’s entirely up to the packagers to decide how they want to make dependencies available, some distributions like Debian use a depends/recommends/optional system, where users can configure recommends to be either installed by default (like depends) or not (like optional).

^

In flathub, I made the choice to ship poezio-omemo alongside poezio, with no option not to have it, that’s a packaging decision.

That’s entirely a packaging choice what you make optional and what you make available always.

Note though that Gajim people might not want distribution packages to send them reports if they come from old versions.

Because many distributions tend not to update software they ship, so they will continue providing bugs that have been fixed years before.

Yes, but if they look in Gajims deps and see "optional stuff" they're obviously going to mark those as optional, even if it's a bad idea

Maybe software version can be included in the report so that it's ignored on reception..

Users of such software can contact their packagers to recommend them not to mark them optional and instead make them recommends, for instance.

right, I recall some debate about xscreensaver on that topic (where bug reports against packaged software should go)

pep., sounds a bit stupid to have hordes of users send the same issues for years despite it being ignored.

A better example of this might be Prosody (this removes the user UX concerns since it's not going to be a thing non-devs use mostly): on several distros I've tried I install prosody, then can't get it running. It always turns out that luasec is an optional dep. *technically* that's true, but it's not a sane default to not support TLS.

I vaguely recall there being no such thing as optional/recommended in .rpm

Sure, distros could fix this, but they won't because they're not experts and just see "prosody doesn't need this thing, let's not include it"

Sam, actually no longer true ✏

jonas’, Debian recommends all bugs about software they package to be filled against the Debian bugtracker, but users usually ignore that, and Debian does a very bad job at sending those bug reports to upstream projects.

Link Mauve, agreed.. but what else can a project do against ancient packages

oh nice! I run into that every time I setup prosody and never remember, so that's excellent

See, Gajim should fix this like the Prosody folks did :)

But yah, reports about old versions is a whole other topic and problem

Sam, not just reports, users using old versions.

This is mostly fixed by Flatpak in Gajim’s case.

Sure, that's what I mean, that's strictly a distro packaging issue

Which avoids the problem by bypassing the distribution.

And also by being packaged by the actual project people, so they know what is optional and what is not, and can make opinionated decisions.

Oh, you mean if Gajim itself packages a flatpack or RPM or whatever?

As a flatpak yes.

Yah, I agree that's great, but it won't solve anything

How so?

There are other optional dependencies that are strongly recommended but technically optional because things work without them

Most users will just install debian or whatever and never think "I should go look on this softwares website and update my repos"

Yes, that’s a Debian issue.

Or maybe a Debian user issue?

That is a policy decision for the user

Do they want Support, or do they want NEW FEATURES NOW!!!!!1

Yes, that's my point, it's a user issue. But we're veering into completely different and much bigger problems now.

Where they expect a two years old distribution which ships three years old software to be usable.

Zash, or bug fixes now.

Sam, so, ask Fedora devs to make that sentry package a dependency of Gajim, if it isn't already planned

let's take a moment to remember windows, where all you get is setup.exe and trying to remember to update.

Sam, if a user uses Flatpak, which on many distributions is the graphical default nowadays, this won’t be an issue.

jonas’, setup.exe with a bazillion Next steps that can include checkboxes for optional stuff?

:-)

where optional stuff often includes all sorts of garbage

Somebeing checked by default, like commercial ads :P

or "lets open pdf with firefox now"

Oh and it looks like Fedora has Recommends

jonas’, we still have Gajim 0.11.4 Windows users on our server. :D

But every such dependency multiplies the number of possible setups by 2

The original point was that normal users aren't going to reach out to Fedora or install random entire new package managers and we should make this as easy for them as possible which means sane defaults and guiding the packagers who probably don't have time to figure out if every single thing is actually required but marked optional or truly optional and not that useful. So I don't really want to think about reaching out to the maintainers or trying to figure out flatpak

I mean, obviously we can quibble about what should or should not truly be optional. Maybe the sentry thing is fine being optional but OMEMO isn't, for example, or maybe they should both be required.

Sam, if _you_ don't, then "normal" users definitely won't

Yah, I definitely don't want to figure out extra steps just to use a chat thing, even though technically I have enough background knowledge to go do it.

So instead you complained about it in a public chat, and not even the Gajim one.

30 minutes well spent, thanks all, I'm going to go buy insect nets for my window so I can have it open and free the 30°C inside air so it does not haunt me

fortunately "normal" users don't use fedora

fwiw I don't even report problems for my own software.. at least not all of it :/

There was a discussion about reporting in Gajim, I suggested it should be easier. Others were the ones turning it into a big discussion.

moparisthebest, yeah they use Arch, we all know that :)

moparisthebest: my parents use it (they have no idea what it is, just that they bought a laptop and this weird new version of windows or something was on it). I picked fedora specifically beause this is getting more common

But also the discussion has nothing to do with gajim in particular, that was just the original example. It's a more general problem about picking sane defaults and where exactly that work lies. It's worth having here.

Or picking sane distros

pep.: unfortunately "normal" users run windows or macOS or chrome os I guess :'(

All of the ones I've used commonly do this (Arch, Fedora, Debian). Maybe some do it right, but enough big ones don't that I think it's reasonable to consider that the upstream software should think about this.

Sam, I agree, as I said ealier, lines are blurry, and "sane" doesn't mean much

“14:59:01 Sam> The original point was that normal users aren't going to […] install random entire new package managers […]”, Fedora defaults to Flatpak when available.

to Sam 's earlier point about prosody, I actually don't want prosody doing TLS at all when I install it so maybe I'm the target audience for luasec being optional ? :P

You could still have it not do TLS at all even if some extra stuff that will be beneficial to 90% of all users was included :) of course, there may be minimal distros where the point is to keep things small with different considerations, I'm arguing that we should think about the 90% and not make the day to day experience worse to cater to tiny percentages of users

I remember ubuntu (and I don't remember if this was ubuntu-specific or debian did it too) used to *always* install recommended (but optional) packages when installing something

and if you didn't want it all, you had to type --no-install-recommends to prevent it, perhaps that's what you are after?

Yah, something like that would definitely be better from the distro side

I'm not sure if such a thing exists in Python, but a few of these should probably be done there too (back to Gajim as that was the original thing that turned into an example)

moparisthebest: that's the default on Debian as well

On Android I have to make this call myself, so I include the sentry lib or not depending on the distribution mechanism. For example I obviously can't include it in an fdroid build

Sam: python-sentry was declared optional, because we feared someone shouting *telemetry is bad* (without looking in the details on how sentry is configured with gajim). So we let the package maintainers decide whether to recommend sentry or not. Old versions reporting old issues are not a problem, since those are filtered automatically :)

Fair enough, sentry might be a reasonable actually optional one. For gajim specifically it would still be nice to be able to report stuff though.

singpolyma: thanks for thinking about that and not just being like "whatever, that's fdroids problem"

Sam: if you install the sentry dep, you'll get the same traceback window, but clicking "Report" will do the rest automatically (no login needed)

Yah, the sentry del doesn't exist on my distro (yet) and many users don't be able to figure that out.

Dep, even.

Sam, https://pypi.org/project/sentry-sdk/

I'm aware of what it is :)

no pypi for you?

No, I'm just a poor normie who doesn't know what this pypi and command line thing is

(Jokes aside, extra steps are just too much even though yes, I'm sure I could figure out a way, I just want to chat and I would report bugs, but not if it requires extra work for me)

Sam: it *is* fdroid's problem of course. They could decide to add sentry if they wanted to, but I expect they anti-want it

> Sam: if you install the sentry dep, you'll get the same traceback window, but clicking "Report" will do the rest automatically (no login needed) Why does it need another dependency to do what should amount to submitting an http post form?

kurisu: the sentry sdk does a lot of nice instrumentation of your stack to get stuff submitted nicely with context ✏

Maybe do the http query anyway if the sdk isn't installed?

As much as I'm sympathetic to what kurisu was saying, I must admit that I have used sentry et al. and they are rather nice. Though personally I'd use it if installed, or just do a manual post or send a message or what not if not (or just not use it at all, it's not worth the extra complexity over just uploading the data somewhere and putting it in the system myself)

Nobody mentioned it but I assume this is all opt-in anyway, right?

The user has a say in all this, before submitting

yes

Yah, it's a pop up with a stack trace and asks if you want to submit it

Right