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Verify documentation example before the release of a new version?

My question is based on the observation that when a new Mathematica version is released (this time being 12.2) some of the functions that don't even receive an update from the previous version often get broken.

How is it so that the examples in the documentation are not checked for consistency of operation/results before a new Mathematica version is shipped? I believe that even with a team of 5-6 people in the quality control department (assuming there is any) it is possible to check the examples for all listed functions in Mathematica in about a week.

Why is such a simple task and simple expectation so hard to meet? The issue at the end is that a buggy release will cause many of the mission critical functions for say an end user to break.

It is a pity that I have to install not one version (that I can fully trust) but keep four versions of Mathematica (11.3, 12.0,12.1 and 12.2) simultaneously (grabbing over 50 GB). Reason: because some things work in one version and the others in another version. Please do enlighten me how hard are the user expectations to be met. We do not want more and more functions; we just want the functions to work reliably and correctly. There seems to be issues with the quality control here that needs to be sorted before releasing future versions.

Take this simple example:

ReplacePixelValue did not receive any update since 2014 (version 10). Then how come the second example in its documentation (in the "Applications" subsection) cease to function properly. Furthermore, I am attaching a notebook with another example for this particular function to demonstrate that something that works perfectly in 12.0 and 12.1 fails in the 12.2 release.

Attachments:
BUG.nb
POSTED BY: Ali Hashmi
21 Replies
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Hans Milton
Hans Milton
Posted 4 years ago

Mathematica 12.3 just came out. The second example in the documentation reference for Manipulate shows this:

enter image description here

??

Here is the the same in 12.2:

enter image description here

I am using Windows 10. Was the Manipulate documentation tested, on Windows, before release of 12.3?
POSTED BY: Hans Milton
POSTED BY: Ian Hojnicki
Hans Milton
Hans Milton
Posted 4 years ago

Thanks Ian. Setting "PreferredGPU" to "Software" solved it.

enter image description here

Btw, I did not see anything wrong in the Preferences dialog
POSTED BY: Hans Milton

Great. If you use 3D graphics a lot, you might want to consider setting 3DRenderingEngine to OpenGL while PreferredGPU is set to Software.
POSTED BY: Ian Hojnicki
Hans Milton
Hans Milton
Posted 4 years ago
POSTED BY: Hans Milton
Hans Milton
Hans Milton
Posted 4 years ago

Resetting Mathematica on A solved this problem. Input auto replacements now works.
POSTED BY: Hans Milton

Perhaps this might be useful somehow: https://redmine.wolfram.com
POSTED BY: Kapio Letto
Hans Milton
Hans Milton
Posted 4 years ago

Quoting Stefan:

We do in fact check documentation examples before a release. However, things do sometimes get missed from time to time, or a fix was not ready in time.

Locator has a documented option AutoAction. But it has not worked after version 10.4. That is more than 4 years ago.
POSTED BY: Hans Milton

We have been aware of this issue for quite some time. I cannot give any estimate on a time frame for a fix, though.

POSTED BY: Stefan Ragnarsson

Hi Stefan ! this is precisely what we end users are requesting with every minor or major release. If the same developers who have created old functions are busy creating new and new functionality then not much time or resources can be invested to fix the old issues. Additionally, new bugs are incorporated along the way either because the new features rely on older functionality/infrastructure under the hood or possibly because new bugs are inevitably incorporated while developing newer functions. What would be considerably better is to put a great deal of effort to get either 12.3 or possibly 13.0 free of critical bugs and old lingering issues in the system. Thanks !
POSTED BY: Ali Hashmi

I completely agree with this statement. The idea of a development cycle for just fixing bugs like it was done in 12.1.1. was great. Hopefully it will also be done in the future. But as far as I know it is unfortunately not planned for 12.2.

It is also a big problem for a user that there is no clear time frame when a bug will be fixed. It could be 3 month when you are lucky, three years or probably never. For some issues it might not be easy and thats understandable but for regression bugs it is not acceptable. Regressions should be fixed short term. Waiting a full development cycle which can last almost a year is simply too long. And then it is by far not clear if the issue gets fixed. If Wolfram wants to get a foot in the enterprise market for production use (Wolfram Engine, Application Server, ...) in my opinion thats absolutely necessary. I wouldn‘t take the risk and bet on a tool for critical applications when there is no clear roadmap for bug fixing. Matlab for example release a major version twice a year and a bug fix update every month. Another example is Visual Studio with regular bug fix updates.
POSTED BY: Philipp Winkler
POSTED BY: Daniel Lichtblau
POSTED BY: Philipp Winkler
POSTED BY: Daniel Lichtblau

Hi Daniel, while I understand your point, I should point out that what we and many end users here are referring to are the longstanding issues that are overdue. Take for instance the case of FindMaximumFlow. I think for the past four years or so at least three bug reports were filed by myself alone, hoping that it might get fixed in the next update. It just never gets fixed.

The problem is that the bugs are not weeded out quickly and a lot of bug-baggage has built up over the years. From the user's perspective this can be seen (misconstrued) as Wolfram being nonchalant about longstanding bugs.

Don't you consider that bug in FindMaximumFlow and many others functions should be dealt with irrespective whether the enterprise users need it or not. The function is important for many people doing research or working with graphs and networks. Besides the inclusion of the function in the language itself mandates that any bugs should be sorted out, especially ones that are over 5 years old. A bug is a bug and needs to be fixed to maintain the userbase.
POSTED BY: Ali Hashmi
POSTED BY: Daniel Lichtblau
POSTED BY: Ali Hashmi

Please file a report to support@wolfram.com. They usually monitor the community, but not always.

Documentation can be updated in paclet updates, which are (mostly) silent, but they need to know about the problem.
POSTED BY: George Woodrow III

Hi Ali,

Thank you for bringing this issue to our attention. We do in fact check documentation examples before a release. However, things do sometimes get missed from time to time, or a fix was not ready in time.

Please note that the Wolfram Language is highly interconnected. Many functions internally use other WL functions as part of their implementation, or share a codebase with several related functions. So even though a particular function did not get a specific update in a release, something it depends on might have been changed.

POSTED BY: Stefan Ragnarsson

Here is another example in the Documentation which used to work in 12.1.1 but not anymore in 12.2:

GeoSmoothHistogram[
WeightedData[
CountryData["UnitedStates", 
"LargestCities"], #["Population"] &], 20, PlotLegends -> Automatic]
POSTED BY: Philipp Winkler
Hans Milton
Hans Milton
Posted 4 years ago
POSTED BY: Hans Milton
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