Go live with 1000 known bugs

The Adobe Magento 2 team and the community is working hard at reducing the number of bugs in the Magento 2 product. Despite the effort there seem to always be around 1000 confirmed bugs.

Quite often old bugs reappear and have to be fixed again. A new version have a lot of fixed bugs, some new features, some new bugs and some old bugs.

The bugs are so many that you need to think in new ways and ask yourself: -What kind of bug is best? Unknown bugs or known bugs we learded to live with.

Magento is very open with the bugs. You can easily see all known bugs here: https://github.com/magento/magento2/issues

You can search and find tips and work around. You can add new bug reports. You can contribute with your findings and your code. You are then part of the very important community.

I would say that the Magento 2 version that has matured four weeks is the best version to use. Then the bug reports have started to come in and you can see if this version contain any nasty bugs that might affect your store.

The version number consist of three digits. 2.2.5 means: Magento 2. Series 2. Release 5.

If you want to use a new series then be extra careful. A new series have been under development for a long time. It has not been tested out in the real world. Let a new series mature eight weeks. Then the bug reports have started to come and perhaps also a new release.

Why not do a version freeze and deal with the bugs that we are affected by? That is what most sites do, but not forever. After a year it is time to upgrade again.

If you do not upgrade your software then things start to leak. A new requirement from a payment provider force you to upgrade their module, your Magento is too old for the new module, and you are so far behind in upgrades that you can not jump to the latest version because the database can not be converted. And your server has a too old operating system to host a newer Magento.

Magento 2 is not ONE product. There is a lot of dependencies to other software packages. You can upgrade those with composer while keeping the Magento version you have. Those components are not created or managed by Magento. Magento depend on them but we do not know what bugs they have until we get a problem and look things up.

What we can do to is to have version freeze for a while, then update the software and test often.

I can do a purchase. Is the site working then? So much things can go wrong. Your customer service together with logging can tell if your site is ”mostly working” or if too many of your customers have problems.

The most importat is the purchase flow. As many customers as possible must be able to place an order.

During the curse of the temporary version freeze you will have a time window where you can work in itrations to improve your site. Each iteration will have a mix of the worst bugs that is bad for your business and the features you think will benefit your business the most.

”Mostly working” go hand in hand with ”Good enough”. It is very easy to spend a lot of money and time on edge cases that affect a small portion of the customers. When one edge case is fixed the next will pop up. A skilled programmer is not only a person that will fix all your wishes, a skilled programmer is also your guide saying ”Don’t go there, it will be a mess”.

Should I go live with a new Magento 2 site under these curcumstanses? Yes!!, and do not wait. When it is mostly working and is good enough then launch. The only thing that must be 100% is the taxes. And Magento 2 is awesome on VAT.

By Peter Lembke 2018-12-14