Re: bug-buddy integration

[Brian Nitz <Brian Nitz Sun COM>]

Luis Villa wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 7:28 PM, Brian Nitz <Brian Nitz sun com> wrote:
>   
> > Luis Villa wrote:
> >     
> > > On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 6:46 PM, Andre Klapper <ak-47 gmx net> wrote:
> > >
> > >       
> > > > Am Mittwoch, den 11.03.2009, 23:28 +0100 schrieb Juan Jesús Ojeda
> > > > Croissier:
> > > >
> > > >         
> > > > > Apport[1] is a system which is able to send a very complete crash log
> > > > > to a bug tracker system (not necessary the Ubuntu's one). This is
> > > > > working with the one from Ubuntu, but also Fedora and OpenSuse. Can be
> > > > > used agoinst email based interface and more.
> > > > >
> > > > >           
> > > > Fedora has Crash Catcher: https://fedorahosted.org/crash-catcher/wiki
> > > >
> > > > I always wonder if this isn't all about duplicating efforts.
> > > >
> > > >         
> > > No need to wonder; it definitely is duplicated and wasted effort. Not
> > > intentional, of course[1], but painful no matter how you slice it.
> > >
> > >       
> > Do we have a list of features missing from bug buddy so maybe we could
> > direct some of this energy towards making it (or some standard community
> > crash logger)  meet community need and distro specific needs so we don't
> > have every distro reinventing this wheel?
> >
> >  My own ideas are:
> >     
>
> - has to work with non-GNOME apps.
>   
I don't think this precludes having a user-invoked option, though it 
does make it a bit more of a challenge. 
>   
> >   - capture more complete distro and component revision information.
> >     
>
> This is pretty complete in modern versions of bug-buddy, I believe.
>
>   
> >   - optionally passes bug first to a distribution maintained bug database.
> > (to filter distro specific bug pollution)
> >     
>
> This is the default behavior distros tend to want... which makes it
> hard for upstream to do anything useful, since the distros are
> historically pretty bad at getting this data upstream. (By 'pretty
> bad' I don't think any distro which does this has ever
> systematically/programatically moved that data upstream, though I'm
> certainly out of touch and may have missed something.)
>
> Mind you, it isn't clear to me that upstream has been doing much
> useful with the data we do have of late, but like the uncoordinated
> re-inventions of bug-buddy, that is a symptom of the general
> underinvestment in QA by GNOME partners.
>   
Too true.
>   
> >   - callable by user from application (window manager?) menu, captures user
> > comments as well as application context info.
> >   - plug-ins for distro specific capture tools (strace, ktrace, truss,
> > dtrace, mdb, pstack, gdb, dbx,...)
> >     
>
> I'd note that this data is actually overrated. Useful, yes, but even
> the primitive information we used to get was very useful when we got
> it in volume and we had eyes poring over it for clues. I have a sense
> that the current emphasis on all these various tools (with their
> attendant complexities) makes perfect data collection the enemy of
> good data collection.
>   
I agree that too much information in the capture can be at least as much 
of a problem as too little.  Still, it would be nice to capture enough 
to have a unique 'bug/crash fingerprint'.  Everyone tells me this is 
impossible, but I'm an optimist.
> Luis
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