[sldev] Re:SVC-85 - friends lists not working

[Jake Simpson]

Peeps,

I'm just going to re post this set of questions I added into the 
comments of SVC-85 - https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-85 (friends 
lists not always working to show online presence correctly) just to see 
if any of you guys have run into this, and if you do, if you could look 
into the results of the questions. I would like to get this fixed but I 
need some more data before I can get it done right.

Thanks

OK, so I'm looking into this since it's obviously a bug of much 
contention. You can't have much of a second life if you can't see anyone 
to share it with.

Kelly and I have been talking about approaches to fixing this - the code 
as it stands _should_ work correctly because in many circumstances it 
does. However, the code behind this is pretty knarly and has many places 
of potential failure, so Kelly and I have come up with a new way to deal 
with this (based on how we do group online presence reporting), using 
our new back bone system the way it should be used.

With a view to doing that, I have a couple of questions for you guys.

1) When you know someone is on line, even though the friends list says 
they are not, do they show up as online in the groups list (assuming you 
know they are subscribed to one of the same groups as you)? The code 
that the groups uses to determine online presence is actually different 
from the code that the friends list uses (it's older code and also the 
friends list returns a lot more information regarding the friends 
themselves than the groups list does - that just has enough to say "this 
person is online or not". The friends list has information about where 
they are so you can IM them etc). From what we've observed, the groups 
stuff works when the friends list doesn't - it would be nice of you guys 
could confirm this.

2) When you initially log on and someone is not reported online (because 
they aren't), is the system updating when they _do_ log on? What I'm 
saying if either the friends list says everyone is off line, then a 
friend logs on and it updates and says they *are* online, or they *were* 
online, the friends list says they aren't - they relog - does it show up 
correctly then? Again the code that gets the initial list of friends and 
interrogates them to see if they are online or not is not the same 
system that reports a friend has logged on (or off) - it uses some of 
the same paths but it's not entirely the same.

3) Are we seeing an initial friends list situation where *select* people 
are not being reported as online, or everyone?

4) What does it take for a friend you know is online to show up as 
online in the friends list if they are initially not shown?

The answers to this will help up determine exactly what's broken and 
whether we can fix it or whether it'll be easier to just try a new way 
of doing it.

Either way, I want you guys to know we are on this - it's a top priority 
with LL.

Jake