Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

App suddenly crashing on startup due to FBSDKRestrictiveDataFilterManager.m

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 446 posts

Re: App suddenly crashing on startup due to FBSDKRestrictiveDataFilterManager.m

#271

Post by slipheen »

corndoge wrote: post #253
linux2647 wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. While, yes, Facebook needs to test their SDK, app developers need to build resiliency into their apps to ensure third party dependencies don’t break their app. The developer adopted it into their app; it’s their responsibility to do the proper checks in cases like these where Facebook broke things on their end.

Ah yes. If hacker news goes down while you are writing this comment, it is your responsibility to ensure you can still post your comment despite the service breakage.

Unless your app is designed for browsing Facebook, there's no reason that anything on Facebook's servers should affect if your app works.

Many of the apps crashing are using Facebook for a portion of their app, such as one login option.

Letting that take down the whole app is insufficiently defensive coding, whether in the app, sdk, or glue between them.

Re: App suddenly crashing on startup due to FBSDKRestrictiveDataFilterManager.m

#272

Post by Sephiroth87 »

XCSme wrote: post #267
monocularvision wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a native SDK that is crashing the process. There is nothing an app developer can responsibly do to prevent or recover from this crash. Other than remove the SDK, of course.

So there is no way to try {} catch {} it, right?

Not in this case, as it's not code explicitly called by the client, but automatically loaded on app launch...

Re: App suddenly crashing on startup due to FBSDKRestrictiveDataFilterManager.m

#273

Post by emerongi »

blantonl wrote: post #265
emerongi wrote: post #228

The most popular apps on one of the most popular operating systems just plainly don't even open. What has this industry become? How are we so goddamn inept at writing software? This is an industry where we can automate testing - not many other industries have this capability - and we still don't have a simple test regime of "check if the app opens" for any of those apps. Somehow, at the most valuable software compani…

Bugs happen. Tests miss edge cases. Shit happens. This will be a fart in the wind and lessons will be learned.

Maybe lessons will be learned, maybe not.

The industry seems to have very low standards. Let's let these mistakes happen over and over and let's just patch them as we go. No long-term thinking.

Someone should collect all these horrible incidents and start a university course on just plainly what NOT to do.

Re: App suddenly crashing on startup due to FBSDKRestrictiveDataFilterManager.m

#274

Post by speedyapoc »

Issue seems to be resolved, but the the comment on their bug tracker is almost infuriating.

“ Earlier today, a code change triggered crashes for some iOS apps using the Facebook SDK. We identified the issue quickly and resolved it. We apologize for any inconvenience.” (1)

At the scale of Spotify and other massive blue chip apps, this bug could have very well cost companies hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars in damages. This apology on the bug tracker seems so insincere. With this type of issue occurring twice in a couple months, I’ll be ensuring that no clients of mine ever install or rely on Facebook services within their mobile apps. Facebook has a responsibility to developers to ensure that their SDKs and integrated components are stable, and they have failed.

[1] https://developers.facebook.com/status/issues/17391881029111...

Re: App suddenly crashing on startup due to FBSDKRestrictiveDataFilterManager.m

#275

Post by Sephiroth87 »

mattgreenrocks wrote: post #261
yreg wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So how could the app developers have prevented this, other then not using the SDK? (I'm not advocating for using the SDK.)

Would disabling SDK autoinit have fixed this? That was a suggestion raised back in March. Seems like a net win to avoid static initializers in the first place. (Am not a mobile dev, but it wasn't exactly hard to find that, either).

Maybe (although some people report that not working), but not necessarily, as "autoinit" is just an if case checked in the same auto executed code in the Facebook SDK, which could still crash before the flag is checked.

Re: App suddenly crashing on startup due to FBSDKRestrictiveDataFilterManager.m

#276

Post by rideontime »

scottmf wrote: post #148
s_dev wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Current position of Apple is if you're going to include the FBSDK Sign-In you have to include the Apple Sign-In button too. Removing FBSDK is also acceptable to Apple. So Apple have put out an incentive to their third party Devs while still giving some freedom.

Apple needs to promote a simple solution to switch your Spotify/whatever account from FB login to the privacy-focused Apple login. Obviously it would require app developers to implement, but Apple has a lot of power here.

In our app we've already added a "Link your Apple ID" option to add Sign In With Apple to an existing account, it's easy enough to implement without any official support from Apple.

Re: App suddenly crashing on startup due to FBSDKRestrictiveDataFilterManager.m

#277

Post by blantonl »

emerongi wrote: post #273
blantonl wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bugs happen. Tests miss edge cases. Shit happens. This will be a fart in the wind and lessons will be learned.

Maybe lessons will be learned, maybe not. The industry seems to have very low standards. Let's let these mistakes happen over and over and let's just patch them as we go. No long-term thinking. Someone should collect all these horrible incidents and start a university course on just plainly what NOT to do.

Some of the very brightest software engineers in the world work at Facebook. As much as I would love to rip on Facebook, I also understand that integrated software development is hard, and I guarantee you that Facebook is "doing it better" than most.

Don't sit in an ivory tower and throw stones in glass houses. Can you guarantee that your own SDLC house is in order? Because it might be, right up until a sneaky edge case nips you in the butt, and then suddenly it isn't.

Re: App suddenly crashing on startup due to FBSDKRestrictiveDataFilterManager.m

#278

Post by sigwinch28 »

occamschainsaw wrote: post #266

I installed iOS 14 beta today and got mad at Apple because I thought the update broke so many apps on my phone. Turns out it was FB sdk coincidentally. One more reason to be mad at FB.

Same thing happened here. Spotify wouldn't open and I thought "oh no, I need to downgrade to listen to music via Spotify."

Someone recommended airplane mode and lo and behold the app started working. This is Facebook's fault, but also Spotify's.

How such an established platform with supposedly-established engineers can let a third party library crash their app at startup is genuinely embarrassing.

Re: App suddenly crashing on startup due to FBSDKRestrictiveDataFilterManager.m

#279

Post by rv-de »

yreg wrote: post #237
emerongi wrote: post #228

The most popular apps on one of the most popular operating systems just plainly don't even open. What has this industry become? How are we so goddamn inept at writing software? This is an industry where we can automate testing - not many other industries have this capability - and we still don't have a simple test regime of "check if the app opens" for any of those apps. Somehow, at the most valuable software compani…

The apps are broken serverside by Facebook. No amount of testing (automated or not) on the side of the app developers would have prevented this. Facebook's own apps did not break since they are on the latest version of FBSDK. What Facebook needs to do is to test whether their changes don't break other people's apps.

> What Facebook needs to do is to test whether their changes don't break other people's apps.

I'd argue this is at the very core of why you test. I mean this problem is as simple as (n+1).m vs n.(m+1) in terms of versioning vs revisioning.

If that is not being tested then I'd say Facebook isn't actually testing at all - at least not in a practically relevant sense ...

... despite the shit-load of YouTube videos from FB devs lecturing about CI/CD and what not.

Re: App suddenly crashing on startup due to FBSDKRestrictiveDataFilterManager.m

#280

Post by vsareto »

emerongi wrote: post #228

The most popular apps on one of the most popular operating systems just plainly don't even open. What has this industry become? How are we so goddamn inept at writing software? This is an industry where we can automate testing - not many other industries have this capability - and we still don't have a simple test regime of "check if the app opens" for any of those apps. Somehow, at the most valuable software compani…

>How are we so goddamn inept at writing software?

Wow who would have thought no standards, free access to learning, fake-ass meritocracy, and exorbitant profits and market control would have led to such a thing

Pick a standard, whether it's a degree program, a cert, or apprenticeships. Hurry up! Just give us a solid target to aim for.

Post reply on HN