How do you handle the poor performance of LC 7?

[Richard Gaskin]

Andrew Kluthe wrote:

 > I guess I've just been hanging back from upgrading the important
 > stuff until I stop seeing emails like these on the list.

There is some performance degradation with v7, but improved in recent 
builds and often the difference may be measurable but not noticeable.

There's an option with File -> Save As in LiveCode to pick any file 
format supported over the last decade.  Once chosen, any use of File -> 
Save will continue to use that format, so you can work on things moving 
between 6.7 and 7.0 without penalty.

Of course backups are helpful, but less for LiveCode than any other 
reason all of us make multiple redundant backups nightly (earthquakes, 
disk failure, etc.).

Given the scope of changes between 6.x and 7.x, relying on hearsay is 
problematic for two reasons:

1. The specific areas in which other people are seeing performance 
degradation may not be the same your app will experience.  Yours may be 
fine, or it may expose something more critical and well worth 
identifying, but if we don't identify it it can't be fixed.

2. To be frank, the number of posts here about issues in v7 is a 
multiple of the number of actual issues, with a relatively small number 
of issues cited over and over, often requiring nudging or direct 
assistance to turn those concerns into actionable bug reports.

True, multiple changes in the iOS SDK have required the team to postpone 
issues for other platforms to rush out yet another 7.0.x build to 
address Apple's changes du jour, and this has meant many things we need 
for other platforms have remained outstanding longer than anyone, 
including the dev team, would prefer.

In my meeting with Ben yesterday we spent the bulk of our time 
discussing community concerns about quality and performance in v7.  One 
of the challenges the team faces is the signal-to-noise ratio, in which 
vague comments like "7 is just broken!" aren't actionable and therefore 
even if well-intended are ultimately confusing if it doesn't produce a 
bug report.

6.x may be maintained for now, but its days are numbered.  It represents 
an expense to the project that would benefit all of us if the dev team 
weren't saddled with.

8.0 is the future, but that future rests on the foundation of v7.

7.0.x is the present.  It includes the largest number of fixes and 
enhancements, it's the core that v8 depends on, and it's what the 
company's revenue depends on now and for many months ahead.

It's also what we in the community depend on for our own work, so let's 
pull together and identify specific actionable issues and make sure 
they're in the bug DB so they can be addressed.

I'll continue to do my best as time permits to help triage and steward 
reports as they come in.

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  LiveCode Community Manager
  richard at livecode.com