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Tasklist

FS#24636 - [libreoffice] released prematurely and irresponsibly

Attached to Project: Arch Linux
Opened by mundane (mundane) - Wednesday, 08 June 2011, 21:00 GMT
Last edited by Andreas Radke (AndyRTR) - Thursday, 09 June 2011, 04:47 GMT
Task Type Bug Report
Category Packages: Extra
Status Closed
Assigned To No-one
Architecture All
Severity Critical
Priority Normal
Reported Version
Due in Version Undecided
Due Date Undecided
Percent Complete 100%
Votes 4
Private No

Details

THE PROBLEM:

The Arch package for LibreOffice was released far too soon, and without any warning about numerous issues.

The LibreOffice release notes indicate that 3.4 is for "early adopters" and lists numerous issues, such as:

"PowerPoint PPTX files created by LibreOffice can't be opened by MS Office Web Apps; PowerPoint PPT files created by LibreOffice can't be opened by MS PowerPoint Viewer 2010 but they can be opened by MS Office"

This is an issue that could catch someone off guard who for example is creating a presentation, a bug which did actually almost catch me out... but luckily I read the release notes. If someone had been creating a presentation to advertise something, that could have been money lost. There are also issues with compatibility with MS Office and Excel XLS export.

I know Arch is all about bleeding edge, but LibreOffice 3.4 is clearly a "beta" package. Arch doesn't ship KDE beta packages, or GNOME beta packages, so why LibreOffice?

If the package maintainer insists on releasing this "beta" release, then at least there should have been an announcement about the numerous issues, but there was only silence. All previous OpenOffice beta packages have been in [testing] until issues were resolved. I don't know why this policy has changed.

Perhaps the maintainer was oblivious to the fact that this was a "beta" release... in that case perhaps that is slightly more easy to forgive (I don't see how you could not realise that though...). But if the maintainer knew that this was a "beta" release with numerous issues, but still decided to push the package anyway without any prior announcement, that is quite frankly very irresponsible.
This task depends upon

Closed by  Andreas Radke (AndyRTR)
Thursday, 09 June 2011, 04:47 GMT
Reason for closing:  Won't fix
Comment by mundane (mundane) - Wednesday, 08 June 2011, 22:58 GMT
Related thread: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=120499

It is NOT trivial to downgrade: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=945267#p945267

3.4 package should be removed from [extra] and replaced with the 3.3.2 that actually works.
Comment by Thomas Dziedzic (tomd123) - Thursday, 09 June 2011, 04:27 GMT
I felt that calling a "beta release" 3.4.0 *final* is misleading at best, so I don't think the maintainer deserves too much flak.
That said, I hope a good decision will be made. Possibly moving 3.3.2 back into [extra] and moving 3.4.0 into [testing] feels like it should work well.
Comment by Andreas Radke (AndyRTR) - Thursday, 09 June 2011, 04:47 GMT
Arch is made for early adopters! And we package what is called a release upstream with some exception where _major_ stuff would be broken.
This is here definitely no true. This is not a beta or testing release.
You only mention one single issue with presentations that won't run easily in an Operating system that Arch never cared about...

Arch users are competent enough to decide if they run -Syu or hold back an update. A downgrade via abs is possible or if needed AUR have more choices for you.

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