Google Halts Chrome 79 Rollout After It Breaks Some Android Apps (9to5google.com) 19
Chrome 79 is creating an issue with WebView (the Android component that allows apps to display content from the web), reports 9to5Google:
On Friday morning, Android developers reliant on WebView and local storage began encountering an issue where their apps lost data after users updated to version 79 of WebView. Those affected took to Chromium's bug tracker, and have described the incident as a "catastrophe" and "major issue." To end users, it's as if apps were entirely reset and just downloaded for the first time. This includes saved data disappearing or being logged out. Given the level of system opacity, most will blame developers for a problem that's out of their hands.
By that afternoon, Google engineers responded and isolated the issue to "profile layout changes" where "local storage was missed off the list of files migrated." A member of the Chromium team apologized Saturday morning, with the Chrome/WebView rollout halted after 50% of devices already received the update. At the highest priority level (P0), Google is currently "working on a solution that minimizes the data loss, and that can be rolled out safely." The last guidance for a patch is 5-7 days.
By that afternoon, Google engineers responded and isolated the issue to "profile layout changes" where "local storage was missed off the list of files migrated." A member of the Chromium team apologized Saturday morning, with the Chrome/WebView rollout halted after 50% of devices already received the update. At the highest priority level (P0), Google is currently "working on a solution that minimizes the data loss, and that can be rolled out safely." The last guidance for a patch is 5-7 days.
Maybe time for CI (Score:4, Funny)
Hey, I know you're a small company, but maybe it is time to invest in continuous integration and testing, and to include third party apps in your tests since you're a platform provider?
Re:Maybe time for CI (Score:5, Insightful)
I suspect that they already are doing CI and if anything that contributed to the release strategy that caused them to break their platform to lose user data.
Continuous Integration is valuable, but it is severely limited. The same sort of lack of foresight on missing part of a profile during migration generally is also seen in designing test cases.
By itself, it doesn't inherently make things worse, but the current culture is that 'We have CI, we don't need traditional test and we can also deploy changes immediately to all users rather than a phased deployment'. CI instills overconfidence in the quality of your code and causus shortcuts to be taken.
The good side of CI is that it is relentless and will run a tedious test case every time. So once you see a mistake you can usually put something in to guard against that same mistake being made again in the future, or to embark upon a major migration to a new language or run-time version and carry forward that experience. Traditional manual testing will cause that test case that has failed every time for the last 2 years of releases to be dropped or half-assed in execution. However it is very precise and only tests the things people thought to test in the first place.
Conversely, while manual testing causes highly repetitive, tedious, and 'boring' tests to fall by the wayside, it also organically covers a lot of normal uses that people didn't explicitly think to try when specifically designing a test plan.
CI is why things like this happen (Score:5, Interesting)
maybe it is time to invest in continuous integration and testing
CI and a wide range of unit tests are exactly how epic disasters happen.
It's because over time, everyone just relies on tests being there to catch issues. They stop thinking with each release, "what could go wrong?" because the tests are supposed to catch it...
But tests can only test fro what you know, what you thought of writing the tests. There will always be gaps in the tests that complex system show up, so if you are relying too heavily on CI it's only a matter of time before some epic disaster hits you.
Re: (Score:2)
And what you actually test. There have been scenarios where the test was basically "return TEST_PASSED". The developer stubbed the test with the intent to fill it in later and forgot all about it and everyone just assumed it tested what it tests and didn't che
Re: (Score:2)
Well they already do have CI for Android, you can see it here: https://ci.android.com/builds/... [android.com]
So maybe it is more about a missed test case that CI didn't catch?
Re: (Score:2)
Who needs internal testing, integration testing, real world monkeys smashing on the keyboard testing. Just push it to live, and blame the end-users for being incompetent, it's the "big company" way.
Maybe time to invite Sidney Dekker for a talk? (Score:2)
http://sidneydekker.com/just-c... [sidneydekker.com]
"A just culture is a culture of trust, learning and accountability. In the wake of an incident, a restorative just culture asks: "who are hurt, what do they need, and whose obligation is it to meet that need?" It doesn't dwell on questions of rules and violations and consequences. Instead, it gathers those affected by an incident and collaborates on collectively addressing the harms and needs created by it, in a way that is respectful to all parties. It holds people accounta
Really? (Score:1)
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Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
Chrome is a central point of failure (Score:4, Insightful)
Chrome is the new IE in the bad way! (Score:2)
Chrome is the new IE in the bad way!
Crashed everything (Score:2)
I didn't lose any data, I just couldn't use any of the apps on my phone. All of the apps dependent on webview crashed immediately.
I was able to isolate the Chrome update as the cause, but didn't know the why until now.
It has given me an opportunity to try Firefox Focus as the main browser on my phone. I may not switch back to Chrome.
Wait, this sounds familiar... (Score:3)
Remember when IE had it's tentacles in everything? Even non-internet applications required IE 6 installed.
History is repeating itself here.