Update: All is good for now. See in the comments, there is a bug tracker for CM that I wasn't aware of and Bugabundo offered his help.(If NewsRob took you to this page then you just hit a bug that most likely only happens on Cyanogen Mod. If that is not the case, let me know in the comments.)
The situation
Meanwhile 90% of the bug reports I receive are from phones running some version of Cyanogen Mod (4.0.4, 4.1.11.1, 4.1.999).
The problem is that I don't know what to do with them. The bugs don't happen with a stock Android and I don't know how to contact Steve in a way that is efficient for me. I don't even have his email address. It needs to be efficient, because I have my own bug fixing and development to do so I can't go through all the messages on the XDA developer forums (but you could, if you like, see below).
I don't see what else to do, but to stop supporting CM. I would be willing to fix my code if it is the problem. I would also do some small CM-specific changes if necessary, but for that I would need to know what and without an efficient communication channel that is not possible?!
Don't get me wrong, it's great that there is CM. A short while ago I was running 4.11.1 myself to get Wifi-Tether.
I uninstalled it, because it was spontaneously rebooting. Mind you the version I used was experimental and it's understandable that it's not rock solid. The problem here is that people are using it not to weed out bugs, but for their day to day operations and expect support for it, including for the experimental version. And that would be fine with me, if there would be somebody on the other side caring for the bugs.
I also fully understand that if Steve would look at each bug report and weed out the duplicates himself, then he wouldn't have the time to develop CM.
Where to go from here?
If you want NewsRob 3.2.0, which didn't crash that often on CM I can sent you a version by email or put it up on the web someplace. It wasn't using SQL views and SQL UNIONs as hard as NewsRob 3.2.1 does and this might be the reason, why it isn't crashing on CM that often.
I would advise you not to do it this way though. You won't get updates this way and 3.2.0 has some bugs that are fixed in 3.2.1 (Mark All Read doesn't work for "my recently starred" and "friends recently shared"), but I'll leave that up to you.
If you want to downgrade to stock Donut, you'll find instructions here.
You can also, of course, stop using NewsRob ;-( I understand! Still, please don't let me know about it, that would make me sad.
This all costs me time that I cannot spend on NewsRob. So I would like to ask you to accept my decision and not start an endless discussion that will also keep me from developing NewsRob.
A proposition
If you are really interested in CM and NewsRob and you happen to be a developer, I have a proposition for you.
Until CM sets up a bug tracker or some lieutenant that weeds through bug reports, you can be that person and act as a mediator between NewsRob and CM. When NewsRob hits an error the compose email screen opens with a stack trace from NewsRob etc. Take this information and go to the XDA developers forum or on the IRC channel of CM (you need to be authenticated, however that works) and contact Steve. I believe it is your job to check through the overwhelming number of messages on XDA first to see if there is any information about this problem, and if not, post the information from the bug report there.
If you can spare the time, it would be even better if you use the Log Collector app to create a logfile which contains all the necessary information. For most cases this will be much more helpful.
If NewsRob automatically took you to this page, then the latter is your only option anyway.
This process will hopefully yield some useful information and if you get back to me with them, I am happy to help.
Update: Of course, if the CM/NR combination works for you, then there is no need for a change. It would be interesting to know what the percentage of users without problems is.
Posted via email from newsrob's posterous
