Poll: Demetra stability
After reading Yann's post and discussion followed a good poll idea comes
to my mind:
Do you revert to previous EAP build or even to released version often? In
other words is "oh, no I can't live with this" situation somewhat common
or only happens rarely or does not happen at all?
What do you think about Demetra builds stability? Are there any particular
harsh areas?
-
Maxim Shafirov
JetBrains, Inc
http://www.jetbrains.com
"Develop with pleasure!"
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I nearly never have to turn back. And I really like the stability of the
Demetra builds. I think the quality is much better than during the last
EAPs.
I know you can't believe it, but I prefer those rock-solid weekly builds...
Johannes Schneider
Maxim Shafirov (JetBrains) wrote:
Not often, but I do revert back to 5.1 when I need to get something done in a very tight schedule. You know, that urgent bugfix that must go to production now.
There are no "I can't live with this" situations for me, but all in all I get a productivity hit when working in Demetra. I'll expand this in the next paragraph...
Performance is particularly harsh, but that's expected during EAP. Demetra is a lot slower for me (1GB RAM is all I got), and the frequent (but so far harmless) exceptions get annoying sometimes. All in all, Demetra is actually a fairly stable EAP, and I try to use it for as many tasks as I can.
The only thing I regret right now is that I can't test all Demetra features. A lot of work is going into team interaction (build server, IDEATalk, etc), but I'm the only member of my team using IDEA (the rest is on WSAD).
Maxim Shafirov (JetBrains) wrote:
No, it happened once or twice with Irida, but so far never with Demetra.
Not with Demetra so far
Stability is much better than other EAPs, especially in the beginning of
an EAP.
I think that so far the one thing that disturbs me (well, other than
JavaScript performance) is Perforce support. I used it much more in
Irida, as now it is less tightly coupled with my real Perforce changes
so I find myself going to P4V more than with Irida.
My basic workflow is to keep two builds of Demetra and use the latest
unless something really bad happens with the new one (which hasn't
happened yet).
When a new build is released I uninstall the older build and then
install the new one so I maintain the 2 build paradigm.
Regards,
Amnon
Demetra is the first EAP version which has lost a lot of attraction for me
after it screwed up my 5.1 projects.
If builds would occur more frequently and would add features I prefer
(topic: refactoring), I would be more willing to try out Demetra. At the
moment I just need to be productive with IDEA 5.1. :-\
Tom
Hi Maxim,
MS> After reading Yann's post and discussion followed a good poll idea
MS> comes to my mind:
MS>
MS> Do you revert to previous EAP build or even to released version
MS> often?
Mostly to compare or double-check things (if I suspect problems with the
EAP build), but so far I've been working with the EAP builds without any
major issues. And since there are some fixes in Demetra that have not been
backported to 5.1 (EJB related), it's hard to envision going back.
MS> In
MS> other words is "oh, no I can't live with this" situation somewhat
MS> common
MS> or only happens rarely or does not happen at all?
Luckily, haven't had any of those so far.
MS> What do you think about Demetra builds stability? Are there any
MS> particular harsh areas?
Nothing out of ordinary. In fact, better than I was expecting, it almost
feels like there's room for some more risk sometimes (read "more frequent
builds" here... :-).
HTH,
Andrei
"Marcus Brito" <mbrito@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:28316286.1144784531332.JavaMail.itn@is.intellij.net...
during EAP. Demetra is a lot slower for me (1GB RAM is all
I got), and the frequent (but so far harmless) exceptions
get annoying sometimes. All in all, Demetra is actually a
fairly stable EAP, and I try to use it for as many tasks as
I can.
This is why I was asking for user-configurable modular
structure for years. I have an old Vaio notebook, made in
1998 (don't laugh), upgraded to 256 Meg of RAM. IDEA 3.x
works... well, ok in this laptop, but I would prefer it used
less memory. I haven't tried to install newer versions on
this laptop. There is no sense to sell it, and I don't want
to throw it out, because "they don't make them like that
anymore" ;)
If IDEA was modular, I could combine features I need, and
have leaner system with less frequent disk swapping.
I've been using Demetra since the first EAP version in my daily job without the need to go back to any other version than the current build. Sure, there are some annoying exceptions or broken features here and there, but almost all the time there's a workaround I can live with (well, there have been only 4 (?) builds so far, so this might change..).
And not to forget: Demetra feels much more productive with all the little nice new features add - and I don't want to go back to 5.x any more :)
Michael,
I may sound a bit rude. Forgive me if I do.
You don't know what you're talking about. Marcus is having performance problems
that solely caused by new features not finally polished. That's what EAP
is for (any snapshots, Marcus?). OTOH I seriously doubt any modularization
will speed things up significantly. Well, we already have some non-trivial
part of IDEA bundled as plugins. Try removing them => do you see any performance
improvements? We could theoretically modularaze to plain text editor state
but is that what you're looking for? Actually there's no need for theoretic
discussion since we all have a joy toy in our hands called Eclipse. Did you
already tried stripping it off to run on your laptop? I wish you luck there.
This is absolute nonsense from commercial point of view to target there since
most people have much more powerful hardware nowadays and they like this
power to be used wisely.
Peace
-
Maxim Shafirov
JetBrains, Inc
http://www.jetbrains.com
"Develop with pleasure!"
Actually I don't think that he was suggesting that you target a 1998
piece of hardware, it was more a point of saying that IDEA 3.0 would
work on such a configuration and Demetra wouldn't.
I've got to say that pretty much every version of IDEA is slower than
the one before, sometimes by quite a way. Unfortunately I don't have
any versions that are that old left lying around otherwise I'd go and
see if it's just my imagination or not.
Of course if I did I'd find out all the features that are missing in the
old version that account for such a slow down :)
Guy
Maxim Shafirov (JetBrains) wrote:
>> This is why I was asking for user-configurable modular structure for
>> years.
>> I have an old Vaio notebook, made in 1998 (don't laugh),
>> upgraded to 256 Meg of RAM.
I JUST started using demetra; previously it was too unusable to consider using for real world development (obviously, this is a personal thing, and I'm sure it was good enough for a lot of people).
On average, I get about 5-6 RCOD's every hour or so. Half the time, the autoposting thingy fails, so the error goes unreported. I'm happy overall with the new features, and look forward to more stability.
However, the main reason I actually am trying out the EAP is the fact that I can drop to 5.1 when I hit a showstopper. So it's VERY important to be able to do so easily and quickly. I do find myself rolling back regularly, pretty much every other eap build merits some kind of rollback when trying to perform some particular task, as no eap works well enough in every area that I find myself using during regular development.
I do find that regular blowups happen during JSP editing, in my case.
Very rarely have I had to turn back.
There was a period in the Irida EAP where I had to (the whole HTML/JSP
syntax parsing of broken/bad JSPs really killed me).
But that also was in turn a good thing as it highlighted A LOT of broken
shitty JSPs in the application :)
I believe I have had to skip one EAP release for Demetra (having heard of performance issues), and have not had to roll back any releases. Note that my work is almost entirely J2SE, so no JSP or similar issues pertain.
--Dave Griffith
Hardly at all on reverting although I do keep 5.1.1 running at times to do detailed feature change comparison.
Stability is good. I would trade some stability for more frequent builds that provide a faster feedback loop on new features and bug fixes.
The only gripe I have with Demetra is the slow performance, especially when tow
or more projects are open at once. Every now and again it will just hang there
with no input possible in the editor window. This extends to analyzing the code -
it takes a lot longer than previous version.
Having said that, I have not yet gone back to 5.1 and am happy with all the new
functionality that I use.
Cheers,
Bonny
Max, will you split this pool on J2EE and J2SE use cases of IDEA? ;)
In my development, currently on last EAP build for J2SE (JDK 1.3), i "can't live" with:
Hierarchy Calls view is totaly broken (CtrlAltH, then change target code and it crashed)
ANT integration is 'not live' (no compition, no lookups)
Some intentions are crashly
Hello Tom,
T> Demetra is the first EAP version which has lost a lot of attraction
T> for me after it screwed up my 5.1 projects.
T>
T> If builds would occur more frequently and would add features I prefer
T> (topic: refactoring), I would be more willing to try out Demetra. At
T> the moment I just need to be productive with IDEA 5.1. :-\
Sorry, but wasn't the screwing projects issue solved as soon as it was found,
several EAP builds ago? We don't know of any project compatibility problems
between IDEA 5.1.1 and recent Demetra builds.
--
Dmitry Jemerov
Software Developer
JetBrains, Inc.
http://www.jetbrains.com
"Develop with pleasure!"
In general I have to agree: Stability is much better than in earlier EAPs.
But: This EAP often deadlocks for me, sometimes not even saving my latest
changes. I have reported most of these deadlocks.
And no, I almost never go back to released version.
Monitoring the forums (and so avoiding other peoples problems) helps.
Maxim Shafirov (JetBrains) wrote:
It's the other way around. Some Demetra features I can't live without
anymore, like the change lists for CVS and Subversion. But I do
occasionally start up 5.1 to use some plugins that haven't been updated
yet or to check if a bug was already present in an older version.
Demetra is pretty stable for me, but does seem to use quite a bit more
memory (could be plugin related though).
Bas
Maxim Shafirov (JetBrains) wrote:
Stability and performance of the latest EAPs seem good to me. The major reason I'm not willing to make the switch completely is due to plug-in instability in the Demetra builds.
I must admit that I'm still using 5.1 as my primary dev environment, especially as we've got tight time schedules at the moment. I can't afford to lose work at the moment due to Demetra locking up, which I found happened quite a lot in the earlier Demetra builds (I haven't noticed this happening as much recently).
Don't know, did not tried newer builds, especially because there were not
much exciting new features to look at. ;)
Tom wrote:
I don't want to state the obvious, but you do know that there was a
simple workaround for that, right?
And if I remember correctly, 5.1.1 is actually not going to throw a fit
at the modified Demetra project files anymore.
Regards,
Amnon
No.
Does not happen at all.
Version control related changes and their stability are the most critical factors in determining wether to revert for me. If I have confidende in these I can live with the niggles.
Oh, fortunately not. Demetra is slower, but not unbearable slow. I was just dismissing as the usual EAP slow down, and didn't bother creating and sending any snapshots. I've heard that JSP editing is particularly bad, but luckily I haven't touched these spawns of satan lately.
Yeah I had to revert several times on the Mac version due to excessive slowness. Typing, focusing, etc.. simply took way too long. The last build seems much better but previous ones were unacceptable. This is on a 1GB RAM 2GHz Dual Core Intel MacBook Pro so we're not talking about a lack of processing power.
It would be nice to have a link on the download page to the current build and the previous build as sometimes the previous build had fewer issues with whatever one is working on.
The really unreliable CVS support (crashing on every other occasion) keeps me
from letting this thing touch anything of real importance. My motivation to
invest any significant time has reached its minimum though as well.
Sascha
No, I don't revert.
Demetra itself works fine (death slow though), but the plugins stability is sub zero. I still blame Demetra for this, as the plugins stop working, because of the often changes, I think.
Yeah, the plugin/API changes can be annoying, especially when (in some cases, not always) the dev team isn't very responsive to questions about these changes or fixing them.
For example, I've just had to roll back to 5.1.1 to use testng, due to this: http://www.intellij.net/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=208525&tstart=0
Hello Hani,
HS> For example, I've just had to roll back to 5.1.1 to use testng, due
HS> to this:
HS> http://www.intellij.net/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=208525&tstart=0
Looks like this problem was caused by our obfuscator. The next EAP build
will be processed by a newer version of the obfuscator, so it should be fixed.
If not, please report. :)
--
Dmitry Jemerov
Software Developer
JetBrains, Inc.
http://www.jetbrains.com
"Develop with pleasure!"
Great, thanks!
(running off to madly click on the EAP link until the says something newer than 5218)
Hello Hani,
HS> Great, thanks!
HS>
HS> (running off to madly click on the EAP link until the says something
HS> newer than 5218)
Oops, sorry...
Just checked with other guys - the problem is indeed caused by ZKM, but upgrading
didn't actually help. :(
--
Dmitry Jemerov
Software Developer
JetBrains, Inc.
http://www.jetbrains.com
"Develop with pleasure!"