Update to Electron 5, 6, or 7

[Redsandro]

Current behavior

When clicking around in the Boostnote 0.11.17 Interface Settings and trying to change the theme, Linux 5.2 will freeze. No error message. No kernel panic. Just frozen. Sysrequests don't work anymore.

I have reverted to the older 0.11.7 and the issue is gone.

Steps to reproduce

0. use AMD "Picasso" APU hardware
1. go to preferences > interface
2. browse around, mess with interface theme and editor theme
3. after a few minutes, observe freeze

Environment

• Boostnote 0.11.17
• Linux Mint 19.1 Cinnamon x64
• Linux 5.2.0-050200rc7-generic
• AMD Ryzen 5 3400G with Radeon Vega Graphics
• AMD RAVEN (DRM 3.32.0, 5.2.0-050200rc7-generic, LLVM 8.0.0) (0x15d8) 19.0.2
• OpenGL 4.5 (Compatibility Profile) Mesa 19.0.2
• OpenGL shading language 4.50
• OpenGL ES 3.2 Mesa 19.0.2
• OpenGL ES GLSL ES 3.20

Other comments

Hardware is relatively new. Not sure if this is something related to some Boostnote programming, or an Electron issue. Where can I see the electron version? Curious to know what is the Electron version for both 0.11.7 and 0.11.17.

[ZeroX-DG]

For 0.11.7 the electron version is 2.0.3 and for 0.11.17 is 3.0.8 I think. Based on the commits that I found.

[Redsandro]

Major version upgrade makes the synopsis plausible. Do you know of any simple 3.0.8 electron app I can test to see if it also crashes?

[Flexo013]

@Redsandro Is this still happening with 0.12.1?

[Redsandro]

@Flexo013 0.12.1 crashes too. Usually when I click the Interface Settings > Editor Theme popup.
I reinstalled 0.11.7.

It's also interesting that the app (that doesn't crash) is very slow, just like the Atom editor, leading me to believe that the slowness is an Electron issue.

-update-

0.11.10 works too.

-update-

0.11.12 is not slow anymore. I suspect that this one will crash. Just wanted to add this update real quick to see if my suspicion is correct.

-update-

The suspicion was correct. 0.11.12 crashes. Now I'm going to try 0.11.11.

I suspect 0.11.11 will crash too because the 0.11.11 changelog is basically the same as 0.11.12's changelog. (What happened there?)

[Redsandro]

0.11.11 crashed too. Since 0.11.10 works fine, I suspect this commit causes the crash: 1388e7d

PR: #2603

[daiyam]

@Redsandro, can you try to update the electron version to v3.1.13?

[Flexo013]

@Redsandro Thanks a bunch for all the helpful info!

[Redsandro]

@daiyam is there an app that already uses 3.1.13? I've tried 3.1.10 (which crashes) but I don't have too much time to do this manually. (I'm not so good with this.)

I believe all Electron versions above 3.0.3 and below 4 crash. Although this is indeed an upstream issue, it seems to be fixed in the next major release branch. I wonder if there are any major things stopping us from updating to Electron 4.2.7.

[Redsandro]

This is fixed upstream in 4.2.7. Can Boostnote upgrade Electron to 4?

[Flexo013]

@Rokt33r is this possible?

[Rokt33r]

@Redsandro @Flexo013 I guess we can. I'll try it in this week.

[Redsandro]

Electron 7 was just released. ❤️

https://electronjs.org/blog/electron-7-0

Anyway, small reminder that Boostnote (Electron 3) is incompatible with Picasso hardware and we need to use Electron 4.2.7+. Until that time, Linux Picasso users will experience computer crashes when using Boostnote.

@Flexo013 this is a critical bug with a known solution that has been open for too long, not a mere improvement request.

Electron 2 is extremely laggy on Picasso hardware, on which I work daily. I'm experimenting with Joplin and Notable to see if I can move away from Boostnote.

Note that Atom (the popular editor) also experienced frequent crashes with Electron 3 on certain hardware, so they ended up skipping Electron 3 and went straight from Electron 2 to Electron 4 in the stable releases.

Also note that Electron 3 is no longer supported, so this is also a security issue. The oldest supported version that received security fixes is Electron 4. But with the release of 7, that will probably soon stop, because it's usually the last 3 versions.

[Flexo013]

While I agree that this issue is important to solve it's lower on the priority list as there are other issues that affect more users.

I don't know exactly what all is involved in upgrading the Electron version, but since the project is open source you can give it a go @Redsandro

[Redsandro]

@Flexo013 I've done commits on the Electron server and the React client of the Boostnote Electron app in the past. I have no experience with Electron itself though, and I don't feel confident taking on something like the entire scaffolding of the app. I was hoping someone with Electron experience and a better overview of dependencies in this project would just fly over this in an hour. 👼

I apologize if I sounded a bit frustrated before. It's just that I've committed PRs in the past to improve this software, and now there's something blocking me from using it but it's beyond my skill level to fix it. After committing I have an emotional connection to Boostnote and I find it difficult to use Joplin, even though it's rather similar.

Also, @Rokt33r said he would try. 😉 Hence the small reminder.

@Rokt33r commented on Sep 17

@Redsandro @Flexo013 I guess we can. I'll try it in this week.

[Flexo013]

@Redsandro That's completely understandable. Thanks for your message.

I have contacted @Rokt33r about this issue directly. Hopefully this is something that we can pick up fairly fast.

[Rokt33r]

@Rokt33r @Redsandro Sorry I had completely forgotten about this. I'll do it tonight.

[Redsandro]

Received this on the upstream issue:

Electron 3 and 4 are not supported anymore, so there is nothing to back-port.

I would be happy just to get Boostnote working (with Electron 4.2.7+), but judging from the above comment, it would be beneficial to upgrade to a supported version, which is 5, 6 or 7.

[Rokt33r]

I'm going to use v4 for v0.14.0. But I'll try to upgrade v6 again for v0.15.0.

[Redsandro]

#3322

Was it really that simple? 😅

Looking forward to the 0.14 release. 💪

[Redsandro]

@Rokt33r can we get a release out?

[Flexo013]

I imagine that this will take some time, since there are a few PRs that are ready for a last check from Rokt33r. Once those are in I see no reason to delay a release any further.

My best guess would be that we will have a release by the end of the week.

[Redsandro]

@Rokt33r can we please get one more release with Electron 4 before you focus on Boostnote Next?

E.g. 0.13.1

[Flexo013]

Will be fixed as of 0.14.0

[Redsandro]

Great, this version works without crashing on Picasso hardware. 👍

https://github.com/BoostIO/boost-releases/releases/tag/v0.14.0