Which version is ready for production use?

brandtj · December 21, 2018, 12:08am

I see too many issues that point to basic functionality not working in the 6.5 releases. Is there a release the team suggests to use that has the least amount of regression bugs? I can't go off of the regression label in github because so many more issues should be labeled as regressions but aren't labeled as such.

We wanted to upgrade from a 5.6 release to a 6.5 release because of some new Elasticsearch features which unfortunately means we have to upgrade Kibana to one of the 6.5 releases that have too many bugs that make it an unusable product.

From observation, I'm starting to wonder if 6.5 was rushed to release. Basic functionality like filtering on some of Kibana's most used visualizations does not work. There has also been 4 different releases for 6.5 in the last month.

Let's look at some code
6.5:

github.com

elastic/kibana/blob/6.5/src/ui/public/vis/vis.js#L101




this.API = {
  savedObjectsClient: savedObjectsClient,
  SearchSource: SearchSource,
  indexPatterns: indexPatterns,
  timeFilter: timefilter,
  queryFilter: queryFilter,
  events: {
    // the filter method will be removed in the near feature
    // you should rather use addFilter method below
    filter: (event) => {
      let data = event.datum.aggConfigResult;
      const filters = [];
      while (data.$parent) {
        const { key, rawData } = data.$parent;
        const { table, column, row } = rawData;
        filters.push(this.API.events.createFilter(table, column, row, key));
        data = data.$parent;
      }
      const appState = getAppState();
      filterBarPushFilters(appState)(_.flatten(filters));

Master:

github.com

elastic/kibana/blob/master/src/ui/public/vis/vis.js#L73


  // For instance, map bounds, which depends on the view port, browser window size, etc.
  this.sessionState = {};


  this.API = {
    savedObjectsClient: savedObjectsClient,
    SearchSource: SearchSource,
    indexPatterns: indexPatterns,
    timeFilter: timefilter,
    queryFilter: queryFilter,
    events: {
      filter: data => this.eventsSubject.next({ name: 'filterBucket', data }),
      brush: data => this.eventsSubject.next({ name: 'brush', data }),
    },
    getAppState,
  };
}


setCurrentState(state) {
  this.title = state.title || '';
  const type = state.type || this.type;
  if (_.isString(type)) {

The code linked above shows that the 6.5 release is a mix of API choices where some of the visualizations handle events one way and the others a different way. I'm guessing because of the continual use of some of the legacy response handlers in these visualizations. It's not surprising that on master it can't be reproduced when the code linked above for master has changed to another different design on how to handle the filter event for visualizations. This same change is on 6.6 branch.

The question then remains should they fix issues like this with in a 6.5 release with the design it was released with or the new design on master. Keep in mind the 6.5 code I referenced has changes to that method that is only 2 months old and presumably was tested/reviewed/worked at some point before release.

I know some of my frustration of this release is coming through in this message but sometimes you gotta let them know otherwise things never change and only get worse. I also know releases without issues is impossible but these issues are rather silly to have fallen through. It feels like the pace at which Kibana is rolling changes out needs to slow down. Otherwise they're looking at reaching 6.5.10 at the end of January. Users are then left wondering what new bugs & loss of functionality will they have to deal with in a newer version just to have a fix for a bug they're currently dealing with on an older version.

I had issues when I upgraded from 4.3. to 5.6 but ones that the team didn't seem interesting in fixing that I had to fix. To be fair it was an edge case that not many people probably utilized that feature. However, this time it's just an unusable product that no one should deliver, so it's definitely getting worse hence the rant.

warkolm · December 21, 2018, 12:11am

While I appreciate it can be very frustrating, thanks for taking the time and effort to provide this feedback.

I'll see if I can get someone to pop in and provide a follow up.

raya · December 21, 2018, 7:04pm

First off, thank you again for taking the time to write this post. We understand it is frustrating to run into bugs and are very grateful to you for sharing your feedback.

As you have surmised in your post, Kibana codebase is indeed trying to migrate from a set of legacy APIs to a single new approach. We are doing it because the current implementation (or rather implementations since there are several in the codebase) are becoming fragile, resulting in exactly the kind of issues you have encountered. We want to rectify this so we can provide improvements to the tool faster and more smoothly.

6.5 release was the first step in that migration and was also an extremely feature-rich release. As a team we have probably underestimated the overall complexity of this release and, as a result, the amount of testing and hardening that is needed. We have already noted that internally and are working on improvements to our release process and test infrastructure to make sure this does not happen again. We don't want to move slower, but we do want to make sure the code we release is of high quality.

brandtj · December 21, 2018, 9:18pm

Ok, I hope things actually change.

Back to the topic, what is the most recent version the team suggests to use for production? Is it something before 6.5? The version you pick should have the least amount of regression bugs. So I need some help from the team as they would have the best idea on which version that would be.

raya · December 21, 2018, 10:05pm

It depends. We know that 6.5 is being used successfully in production by many users, but if the specific issue(s) you are seeing is a show-stopper for your use case, you may need to stay on 6.4 until the fixes are available. Unfortunately there is no single answer.

system · January 18, 2019, 10:20pm

This topic was automatically closed 28 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.