What is up with all these breaking changes?

Configuration
141

@Vasiley I think it is almost time to close this thread.

142

Care to explain why?
I think we do have kind of a healthy discussion here and when i understand some comments right, we also reached a state where we got improvement out of this.
see:

It also made me realize how the release notes are done and how i can help the next time to make them better. I learnt why things i dislike are how they are, and now it is my turn to return some work to make live of other people easier.

People post valid concerns about how home assistant is doing and they do so because they also want to improve the product.

Closing a discussion which does not fit your opinion does in turn not help to improve. It makes things stay like they are and drives people away because they are not heard.

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143

I agree the discussion is not hostile. If people want to spend (even waste) their time in here, I think they should be allowed. You can just unsubscribe.

Time would probably be better spent if everyone would be updating the documentation instead. Or triaging the bug database. But we cannot force people to do that, just like we cannot decide how the coders should spend their volunteered time.

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We would have to know about this to participate :slight_smile: Is this different to the issue tracker we all know and love?

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Sorry, the issue tracker is the bug database. Developers don’t love it though because it is full of useless issues that do not identify what the actual problem is, miss important information, are feature requests, etc. So the important stuff is often missed.

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Ok so how can a lowly user help triage that?

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147

Add a thumb up if you are affected, educate submitters, flesh out details, try to reproduce and say “confirmed” or “works for me”, …

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148

Oh noes, the peoples are having opinions, quick stop them!!!

:roll_eyes:

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149

Not at all, opinions are valuable. The trouble is sometimes they go round and round getting nowhere.

The project is by no means perfect, and I find other’s views enlightening. But as I say, this discussion has gone round in circles several times, both in this thread, every release thread, and several other threads over time. I am not sure there is much utility in continuing it ad infinitum, particularly when people sometimes (again not necessarily this thread, there are many of them) get a little rude towards the developers. Once rudeness or abuse start, IMHO a thread can and usually should be closed.

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I say let them go round and round - if that is what they are doing. No harm done. Closing a discussion looks like censorship which in my opinion is ‘harm done’.

I don’t think anyone has been rude here and certainly not abusive.

And I don’t think every post has to be positive.

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im not saying that there is no direction at all.

im saying that i have seen the direction change over the years. and that can be good too.
and i am saying that i know there is a long term goal, but that there is a lack off short term goal.
or actually middle term goal, because i noticed that there are a lot of short term goals (2 weeks to a month.)

but off course i can be very much mistaken.
can you tell me that there is a goal like:
if we adchieve that and that then we will release 1.0, and we want to adchieve that before some date?

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Except that tool was broken when checking against 0.89.0. So much for QA testing.

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what tool? the configuration checker addon?
did you let it run and check the log? It takes a few minutes to run…

so much for QA testing??? WTF??? I will guarantee that none of the people on beta even gave a second of thought to checking the addon… so you’ve raised an issue right or do you just choose to spread your ‘wisdom’ without helping report errors?

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154

Wow… Complain get flamed. Honest constructive feedback is rarely received well here.

Something needs to change to make hass more friendly. Either the addon (Check Home Assistant configuration) needs to be built in for a pre-upgrade check to see if anything in the current config will break. List those components so the user can then evaluate to proceed or not.

Either that or split updates into modules rather than one monolithic bundle, like a lot of other projects do. At a 1000+ platform it’s just not maintainable. Every upgrade means compromises. It doesn’t need to be that way.

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155

Having the update pre-check if your config has any of the breaking changes in place and advise and abort would not be too bad.

We’d have a ton of community posts when a new version comes out that “How do I fix xxxxx?” that clearly is a result of not reading the blog; but at least it would not be taking systems down and a new level of urgency.

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Yes, the configuration checker is broken. Here is a quote from the Release Notes comments/

colorlog is not part the core dependency, so that check_config script should not depend on it, I will submit a PR to fix it.

For now, you can change your installation script to pip3 install homeassistant colorlog to fix it temperately. Or if you like colorized log in your travis, you can keep it there.

from 0.89: Nissan Leaf, PlayStation 4, Point alarm control, Owlet baby monitor - #74 by awarecan

Alpha testers & devs are supposed to test first. The project reaches beta when it is “feature complete” Features are still being added. It was reported by somebody in that thread.

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I have built something like this for myself now.
It checks if a new version has been released (Including rcs) and then check my config against the new version.
I get notifications when the validation fails.

I was thinking about making it a public project for others to be able to also have this.

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158

I usually get annoyed with ‘complaint’ threads because the complaints usually come from people who just use the software and don’t lift a finger to help. It’s a rather annoying cycle:

  1. Come to forums
  2. Complain
  3. Get all their stuff sorted out, usually provide no information on their fix
  4. Disappear
  5. Reappear 1 month later.
  6. Repeat step 1.

I’ve been here 3 years and it’s the same all the time. It gets old. There’s a complaint of the month thread every month: Security is bad!!! The docs are hard to follow!!! I GIVE UP!!!

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The add-on isn’t a core function, and therefore needs to be tested by the add-on developer or people who use it. If beta testers don’t use the add-on, how would they know it’s broken?

You’re complaining about something that isn’t part of core Home Assistant. It’s an add-on.

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If it was integrated it would probably reduce the number of these complaints.