One week V10 - a brief summary

Tuesday, October 16, 2018 at 8:13 PM UTC

The first week with the final V10 release is almost done. There was a lot of testing going on in the community and I also did some deep dive into some of the new features. I wasn’t that interested in those new admin stuff like streaming replication, auto healing or scheduled mail. I even don’t have a test environment for that to play around with that. I was interested in the Domino Designer client (no, not the User client - for sure), DQL and Node.js.

This post is about some of the results and my general impression with V10. 

TL;DR; - mixed feelings

The beta phase went quite smoothly except from the first beta wave when not all registrants got access. There was a manual process to grant access after we complained about it - history within a few hours. From then all went fluently.

When the final came out we were lucky to have all the part numbers to search for in the catalog - I wasn’t able to find all available packages. I guess the search index wasn’t fast enough when everyone wanted to download. With the part numbers I was able to grab them. No Mac client at this point (wait for it!). In the evening of the launch day (Oct 9) also the App Dev Pack beta was available for download - or not.

Download - an odyssey

The final release packages were available from the software catalog in passport advantage - no problem. The beta packages were published in a different location in the endless universe of IBM servers over a special page that asked for an ID for beta testers - a unique one for everyone who registered.

The App Dev Pack was delivered from a different page - and that didn’t work for all testers and of course also not for me. Others didn’t face any issues, so I guess this is an access rights problem. 

One week after the first problems occurred downloading stuff the situation is the same. Today the Mac client 10.0.1 beta was released. Interestingly the release number already is 10.0.1 - the release we expect to be GA in November. But again: same download issues.

Community FTW

Luckily I finally got both, the App Dev Pack and the Mac client (not installed yet) „on an alternative way“. I know IBM wants us to accept terms and conditions prior to the download (which I already accepted several times now) but if the official way doesn’t work after a full week, then I search for alternatives - or I am offered some. 

One idea, IBM: let uns sign a paper to accept beta terms and conditions, we snail mail it to you (or send it by fax if you prefer the modern fancy stuff) - then put everything in a Dropbox folder and post the link in the community in Connections. How about that?

The client

No comment. This isn’t a client release and you can feel it in every bit. DDE is slow as hell and not very stable. Errors occur in projects that work perfectly in 9.0.1FP7 (no, not FP10). V10 is FP10 + visual awfulness. My opinion: stay on 9.0.1FP7 if you don’t need the latest Java libs and want to keep on working.

If you also don't like the new workspace look and can live without any visual "tweaks" just put this line into your notes.ini / NotesPreferences file:

V10Workspace=0

The server

Usually a no-brainer and so is V10 - if you install it on supported systems, of course. I tested Windows and Linux. No, I didn’t use the newly supported CentOS - I hate this distro. This is far away from being a lightweight server system and even on this monster you have to install several extra packages to get the installer and finally Domino to run. I used Ubuntu 18.04 (and 16.04) and it worked like a charm.

As I said, I did not test the regular admin stuff that comes with the V10 server. I tested Node.js with DQL.

App Dev Pack

This baby comes with the new Proton addin (Linux only at the moment), the Node.js package and a short HTML documentation. The documentation is refreshingly modern in style and short but complete regarding content. Installation of the Proton addin is a piece of cake, so is using the Node.js module.

Node.js - first steps

I already documented my first steps with the new way to access Domino data. It’s unfamiliar but so it was when starting with XPages a decade ago.

The forum and the people

One thing that stroke me most was the direct and fast way of communication with the people from HCL, the developers. None of the forum posts stay unanswered and sometime good discussions follow. As long as the beta for Node.js is rolling there is a chance to deliver some input to the developers - if you find something useful or useless. There is room for improvement, for sure, but today I feel that I am really heard (or read) and that one can really move someting forward - and that feels really good. It started with the jams, still continues with the idea.io and now in the forums. This is the way a product can be improved - listen to the people who really use it! Keep it up, guys!

Resume

As I said: mixed feelings.

On one hand: great conversations, new possibilities and direct communication and feedback. On the other hand: a ridiculous file distribution facility and a client that is simply not usable for me (the Designer).

Make your own decisions, try it and give feedback - things only can get better. And you can be a part of this process.






Latest comments to this post

Ady wrote on 27.02.2019, 15:43

I also added it to the end of the notes.ini with no effect  -  until I added a carriage return.

I guess the notes.ini parser is using the carriage return as a separator... 

My grind with the v9 workspace is that the icons can't decide if they want to display the database title in bold font or not...  

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Oliver Busse wrote on 20.02.2019, 18:10

Thierry, that's weird. I just installed a fresh 10.0.1 and the notes.ini setting still works and it displays the old fashioned workspace. Are you sure you don't have a typo?

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Thierry wrote on 18.02.2019, 22:34

V10Workspace=0 does not work for me. Is it still relevant?

I added V10Workspace=0 to the end of notes.ini and it does absolutely nothing.

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