[Impact]
Ubuntu Friendly will be discontinued on September 15, 2013. However, checkbox still mentions Ubuntu Friendly in a few places, this could mislead users into thinking the service is still active and cause them to waste time testing when those tests will no longer be useful to the community.
UF is mentioned in three places in checkbox:
- When deselecting tests, a warning that results may be not valid for UF appears.
- The desktop file refers to Ubuntu Friendly, mainly to enable finding of checkbox by typing "ubuntu friendly" on the dash search field.
- The "submit results" default message mentions Ubuntu Friendly, in the message asking for an e-mail address to submit to. In practice, this is replaced by a different prompt so this shouldn't need changing, nor does the user ever see this message.
Checkbox revision 2366 removes these three mentions of Ubuntu Friendly, and allows users to deselect any test without receiving a warning.
The proposed SRU omits the change to the desktop file, since it contains a translatable string which would imply additional and undesirable changes to translations.
[Test Case]
- Use an active, supported Ubuntu release (12.04, 12.10, 13.04).
1)
- Open the dash and search "ubuntu friendly". It will locate the "system testing" application. Note this behavior will not be changed since it implies changing a translatable string, which is undesirable in an SRU.
- Open a terminal (ctrl-alt-t), type "checkbox-qt" and press ENTER. The system testing application will start.
- Press "Continue" on the first screen (welcome message).
- Enter password when prompted
2)
- On the "choose tests to run on your system" screen, deselect any of the component categories.
- A message will pop up: "Unselecting a test will invalidate your submission for Ubuntu Friendly. If you plan to participate in Ubuntu Friendly, please, select all tests. You can always skip individual tests if you don't have the needed equipment." (desired behavior: no message appears).
- Dismiss the message, then click "Deselect all" and dismiss the message again.
- Click "Start testing"
3) Once testing finishes, validate that Ubuntu Friendly is not mentioned in the "submit results" screen (since the string mentioning Ubuntu Friendly is replaced before the user sees it, this shouldn't need any changes, just verification that it behaves as described/desired)
[Regression Potential]
The deselection warning has practically no regression potential, removing it simply toggles showing the warning dialog which has no other side effects or implications.
The string change in the "submit results" message is also unlikely to cause regressions, as the string is not even included in translation catalogs and isn't even shown to the end-user (it's basically a placeholder in the UI, which at runtime gets replaced before the user ever sees it).
The string change for the desktop file, which is the one causing "Ubuntu Friendly" to be searchable in the dash, would cause users accustomed to finding checkbox by typing "Ubuntu Friendly" to be unable to find checkbox this way. They'd have to type "system testing" or "checkbox" in order to locate it. This constitutes a behavior change that could be thought of as a regression. This change was omitted from the final SRU proposal so the regression potential, understood as "change in previous behavior", is null. The behavior is somewhat inconsistent with availability of the Ubuntu Friendly service, but this was deemed acceptable versus changing a translatable string and causing fallout in the form of untranslated text and the resulting bugs (see comment #1).
It is not clear to me why changing the .desktop file is necessary, it seems to me that people familiar enough with Ubuntu Friendly to type it in the dash will know that the project has been sunsetted. Additionally, I think the change may lead to some bug reports from users regarding not being able to find checkbox. Finally, the data isn't really lost if it is still in Launchpad so "data loss" doesn't seem like a good reason for this change.
Is there something I'm missing?