review sorting incorrect

Accepted software-center into natty-proposed, the package will build now and be available in a few hours. Please test and give feedback here. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation how to enable and use -proposed. Thank you in advance!

SRU verification for Natty:
I have reproduced the problem with software-center 4.0 in natty and the version of software-center 4.0.1 in -proposed doesn't fix the issue. The reviews are still unsorted.
For Gimp I have: 2011-01-29, 2011-01-31, 2011-02-20, ...
For Moovida: 2011-02-10, 2011-04-03, 2 days ago, 4 days ago

I've tried with english and french if that makes a difference.

Marking as verification-failed

Hi Jean-Baptiste, thanks very much for testing this. To clarify, the reviews sorting criteria isn't strictly by date alone. In fact, it is first by package version so that reviews for older versions get pushed to the end of the list, followed by usefulness ratings so reviews that have been rated most useful come earliest, and then finally by date so that reviews with the same usefulness rating will be sorted as most recent first.

Based on these criteria, I can verify that reviews are now sorted as expected for Inkscape, Moovida and The Gimp. However, there is a caveat in that sometimes reviews for a given upstream version are not always correctly sorted by usefulness. This is due to a separate bug and I've opened a new report for that. Please see bug 777583 for further details, including a screenshot showing this problem for the Inkscape package.

I'll set this one back to verification-needed. Please recheck this based on my clarification in comment #3 and set to verification-done if appropriate. Thanks again!

Thanks for your clarification, that makes more sense and I updated the verification clause of the test case, but it still doesn't exactly match the sort criteria. For example, for inkscape in English the list is (Version, Usefulness, Date)
1. - / 7-7 / 2011-04-04
2. - / 4-4 / 2011-04-15
3. - / 3-3 / 2011-04-05
4. - / 4-4 / 2011-03-09
5. - / 3-5 / 2011-02-07
6. - / 1-4 / 2011-02-05
7. 0.48.0 / 20-20 / 2011-01-31
8. 0.48.0 / 10-10 / 2011-02-04
9. 0.48.0 / 5-5 / 2011-01-28
10. 0.48.0 / 2-3 / 2011-01-28

Following the sort criteria, records 3 and 4 should be inverted unless the version number includes the ubuntu version (-2ubuntuX) as well as the major version (0.48.1)

You can see this with Brasero where the last 8 results don't follow this sort order and there is no mention of the version.

I'm marking as verification-done because it is an improvement over the previous release, results are not sorted randomly, and it introduces no regression but it needs improvement.

Hi Jean-Baptiste, thanks! Indeed, I also noticed the problem you mention in comment 5 and I have reported it separately in bug 777583 (see my note at the end of comment 3). I have committed a fix for that one and that'll come along with 4.0.2 when it is ready.

Thanks again!

This bug was fixed in the package software-center - 4.0.1

---------------
software-center (4.0.1) natty-proposed; urgency=low

  [ Michael Vogt ]
  * debian/control:
    - point to 4.0 bzr branch
  * merged lp:~mmcg069/software-center/Bug635994, many thanks
    (LP: #635994)
  * utils/submit_review.py:
    - fix missing translation (LP: #770439)
  * utils/submit_review.py:
    - improve logging on SSO failure (LP: #773214)
    - do not translate "appname" as ubuntu-sso-login will fail
      for translated names with utf8 chars (LP: #773214)
  * softwarecenter/db/reviews.py:
    - apply review sorting (LP: #773289)
  * softwarecenter/app.py:
    - do not translate "appname" as ubuntu-sso-login will fail
      for translated names with utf8 chars (LP: #773214)

  [ Gary Lasker ]
  * lp:~gary-lasker/software-center/translation-fixes-lp770439:
    - fix translation not showing up (LP: #770439)
  * softwarecenter/view/appdetailsview_gtk.py,
    softwarecenter/view/widgets/reviews.py,
    test/test_appdetails_view.py:
    - enable writing a review immediately after the package
      installation is complete, add test case (LP: #769439)
 -- Michael Vogt <email address hidden> Fri, 29 Apr 2011 16:40:32 +0200