New version in production (https://publiccode-editor.developers.italia.it/) very buggy and with no new official release

[itamair]

Hi,
I am working as External Contractor / Web Architect for the European Commission (DIGIT Directorate) and the FOSSEPS Team on some important project / activities aiming the adoption of publiccode.yml metadata standard for the promotion of open source solutions across EU Public Services.

The availability of a solid, properly usable and accessible Publiccode.yml Editor (& Validator) looks crucial in this context.

We have been referring so far to the most official Publiccode.yml Editor at this weblink: https://publiccode-editor.developers.italia.it/, so as officially mentioned in this developers.italia web page: https://developers.italia.it/en/reuse/publication

BUT, since some days (weeks?) we can now see (at that same page) a very different UI and version from the previous pubblicode.yml editor (still present here though: https://publiccode-editor.etalab.studio/)

Unfortunately we haven't found any news/public notifications about this new version, which also seems pretty buggy and much more unusable and inaccessible than the previous one (thus a big regression rather than a progress).

To better understand what is going on here … (or what we are eventually missing), I feel to forward to you the following question / reported bugs:

1. What new Release or Tag is the new online version (deployed here: https://publiccode-editor.developers.italia.it/) matching with?

The official Publiccode.yml Editor GIT Repo (https://github.com/italia/publiccode-editor) still reports a latest release or tag 1.4.3 with Sep 3 2021 date. And there is no evidence of newest releases or tags corresponding with this new deployed version on line.
This also relates to this open issue: #313
How could a new (very different) version of the publiccode.yml Editor be deployed in Production without a new release or tag?
Are you going into production on the HEAD of the develop branch?
Is this an intentional case or just a mistake? (as usually this shouldn’t be done).

Also we would like to report here the results of our first QA and Review of this new online version by which we can clearly report the following issues/bugs:

2. not able to focus on a field by simply clicking on it: on most of the fields, the mouse/pointer click on the field doesn’t focus on the field input itself and doesn’t allow to select and write into it. I can only trigger each field focus (for input and edit) using the Tab key … ;
3. each Feature field cannot be edited once firstly inserted (it can only be deleted and re-added), so as Features items cannot be reordered while editing …
4. Validate: clicking the Validate there is no clear feedback that the validation process was run, and no clear redirection to the mandatory field stil missing, when it is out of the user window scope (some manual search and scroll is needed to find out what is missing).
5. Contacts and Contractors fields have wrong “Required” validation logics: both the Contacts and Contractors fields are not matching proper mandatory logics from the publiccode.yml standard, such the following:
- the don’t respect proper dependency from the maintenance/type property value (https://yml.publiccode.tools/schema.core.html#key-maintenance-type);
- it looks both these fields become Required ONLY when the user triggers the “Add New” button, and they still block the form input every time a new “Add New” input is triggered (even though they are already not empty)
- their not warned as Required until the Add New button is used / triggered
6. Logo field doesn’t allow the input of any image file: it looks just a simple text field. how to add an image file here?
7. no way to add the Used By multiple value field: this input information looks gone from this editor (thous still present as optional in the standard: https://yml.publiccode.tools/schema.core.html#key-usedby)
8. Valid Publiccode.yml file: once the Validate button generates a (finally) valid Publiccode.yml content, than only the Copy button works (copying the Publiccode.yml content). The Download button doesn’t trigger anything …
9. Carica / Upload functionalities don’t work at all: after clicking on Carica / Upload, from the dialog that appears both the “upload from disk” or “paste your publiccode.yml file from a Git Url” don’t work at all …

Fairly speaking, I can (though & only) see the following improvements in this new version:

• generated pubblicode.yml content is now always forced with the same order, that is driven by the order of the webform elements, and regardless of the order the user populates them with (as it was in the previous publiccode.yml editor)
• it looks that issue The Validate button and process adds empty lines in my publiccode.yml longDescription field #291 is resolved / not present anymore in this new Publiccode.yml Editor

Thanks in advance, if you can kindly explain why all these issues / bugs are present in this publiccode.yml editor instance, and if we can expect shortcoming fixes of those, so as proper Test and QA in the quality deployed in production for this crucial publiccode.yml component.

My regards

[Lorezz]

Hi @itamair , Thank you for your feedback.

I will answer you in a more comprehensive way later, in the meantime I tell you that there will be a changelog soon in addition to version and release tags.

As you guessed we deployed the version by mistake, as the develop branch is set as production and we had not noticed.
All this happened a few days ago, we are working to stabilize the features asap.

We have decided to keep the new version online because it is much more updated on many fronts compared to the old one, even if the restyle may seem uglier, now it uses the official components of the Italian design system and is responsive, which allows it to be used from tablets and mobiles. We also take note of the visual feedback and will try to improve the appearance and usability.

regards

[itamair]

Thanks @Lorezz for your reply and first clarifications.

Then we assume that the develop branch HEAD (without any new version / tag) corresponds to what we see in: https://publiccode-editor.developers.italia.it/
Right?

Hope this will be fixed soon and new official deployment in that public (production) endpoint will have a clear new release/tag, and that you could hopefully use another more appropriate branch name for production (such master, or production itself), as it usually happen.
(otherwise using develop as production branch would be super misleading for everybody accessing and using this repo).

Also I personally feel that in this specific web app, webform solid functionalities (and proper validations logics that match the publiccode.yml metadata standard) are much more critical and should be prioritised when compared to fine tuning of front end styling & mobile or tablets responsiveness requirements.
Who (do we expect) is really going to create and edit/update a publiccode.yml file (in a proper quality way) via a mobile interface?

Thanks for your work and commitment on this, but please take in count all the (functional and validation) issues / bugs that I already reported here. We hope those will be fixed soon | asap, along all the possibile others that I didn't spot yet (our QA and review was still not so deep).

Indeed this new pubbliccode.yml editor looks a clear regression if compared to the 1.4.3 release (that is/was not bugs free itself), but that luckily looks stil available to the following weblinks:

• https://publiccode-editor.etalab.studio/
• https://editor.opencode.de