Local arKItect hell

Lets continue this blog with ... still crashing Local arKItect version!
This blog is not supposed to be used for local arKItect only. We hope to store other issues there ... later.
So, the beta version was almost finished ... but ... we found ... on new Tuesday that arKItect local version ... not crashes ... but simply shows '??' signs instead of non-latin letters. That was bug looking similar to one reported by Sylvain B on last Friday. Well, it was simply fixed and we started to test arKItect:

1. Create an architecture with russian name
2. Create a rule with russian name.
3. Create a treeview with russian name.
4. Create an object with russian name.
-- so far so good. May be stop testing?
5. Create another object with russian name .. crash!
6. Trying to reproduce ... crash on adding object.
7. Good, it is reproducible. Reopen architecture ... crash on opening!
and then we can`t even open it.

We still have a little hope - hey "guru", may be it is your crash?  ... looks like no.

Lets start investigation. All developers involved ... brain storming still gives nothing.
It the late evening we decided that there are some ghosts in arKItect sources and we can`t get them right now. Lets continue it in the morning...

Morning results:
Server side sometimes (especially for non-English letters) sends less information than needed (messages truncated), but ...
client side usually reads some more information than server gives (getting some memory garbage).
looks like those two bugs together gives arKItect version which can work for a some time without crashes.
Fixed.

Local arKItect ... crashes

We continue publishing our developing stories with this blog.

Lets continue with ... Local arKItect version. The beta version was almost finished ... but ... we found ... still on Tuesday! that arKItect local version crashes on start too often.

There was no specific reason for this.
I remember, that during testing I've check arKItect for all pyark tests.. so there were many launches ... and no crashes.

I've start to torture our server-dev-guru - what did you add to arKItect? The answer -nothing special.

We found, that in some situation it crashes more often .. but still the behavior is not stable.

Well, I've constructed a big weapon: arKItect.exe + debugging information (pdb file) + windbg tool switched to 'step by step' execution mode for given application (I've never tried it before).

And in detailed execution information, before the crash I found something about unloading flexlm management library... the ball passed to our great master, Jerome Mascunan.

Together we start to trying different versions of arKItect + flexlm management libraries compiled by Jerome on my computer. We started with 3 binaries and finish with 0 (finally libraries are sent in lib mode to be used during compilation). arKitect stops crashing on late Wednesday ->  Thursday morning.

It gave same headache to both of us and finally fixed. Just yet another one successful story.

Andrew

Local arKItect NetworkStream pitfall

Here is the blog of KI RUS developing news.
We will describe there our complicated problems, with solutions (or without).

Lets begin with Local arKItect version.
The beta version was almost finished by our "server-dev-guru", and already delivered for trying but ...
we found on Tuesday that it didn't work on Konstantin`s computer. It works on Paul`s, Dmitry`s Andrew`s and virtual ones but not on Konstantin`s...

We constructed a detailed log for both server and client side ... but it didn't show exact problem, only gave the http error code #12031 in WinInet.

After deep investigation we found, that the 'server side' for local version is not good enough, and updated it to  be equal to MSDN example... but the problem still remained, in a new form.

Then we setup the stream sniffer (SocketSniff, the standard one Microsoft Network monitor didn't help!) and looked on the problem from another side .. but it still didn't help.

After surfing the Internet, in the MSDN article (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.net.sockets.networkstream.read(v=vs.90).aspx), in small community comment (existing only in one version of this article) we found a small key... on Thursday. Not everyone agreed with proposed solution, it was kind of internal battle. But finally it helped.

All four of us was involved to investigation during those terrible days (about two full day for each one).
Fortunately the solution was found before we got completely exhausted, and we got new practial knowledge (as usual).