How to make sure your applications still works with Bug-Buddy 2.16.0

[Olav Vitters <olav bkor dhs org>]

[ Please keep discussion (if any) in desktop-devel-list; not
  gnome-hackers that devel-announce-list might point to ]

There are important changes made to Bug-Buddy that requires applications
to check if their application will still work with Bug-Buddy 2.16.0.

Basically, the old Bug-Buddy versions badly tried to deal with
incomplete information and let the user deal with the mess:
http://gnomerocksmyworld.blogspot.com/2006/01/things-about-gnome-that-su_113867628589513517.html
To see the new interface make sure you have GNOME 2.15.x + gdb and run
  killall -11 some_gnome_app  (do not run this under solaris)

Bug-Buddy now requires either a .desktop or a .server file for your
application that has the following information in that file (adjust
accordingly for bonobo .server stuff):
X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Bugzilla=GNOME  <-- Mandatory
X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Product=XXX  <--Mandatory (ensure case is correct!)
X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Component=YYY  <-- Mandatory (ensure case is correct!)
X-GNOME-Bugzilla-OtherBinaries=ZZZ  <-- Optional, only if you
application has several binaries
X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Version=X.Y.Z <-- Optional, but highly recommended.

With version I mean the version of your application; not the GNOME
version. The version should need expansion from configure script, so if
you want this you need a application.desktop.in.in to expand here
@VERSION@ (application.desktop.in is used by intltool for translations).

Having the X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Version is optional, but highly recommended.
The server will automatically change versions like 2.15.90 to 2.15.x, so
this doesn't have to be changed in the .desktop/.server file. I
recommend keeping the real version in the desktop file as I might put
this version in a comment.
Users will only be able to fill in their email address and a 'What were
you doing when the application crashed?'. Version information will not
be possible to select anymore. This is why having the
X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Version is highly recommended.

Note: These headers have actually been in use since 2002, except that
Bug-Buddy 2.15.0 now requires them to function correctly. If this
information is missing or incorrect, then Bug-Buddy will save the
bugreport as text (to allow manualy submission).

If you want Bug-Buddy support, but do not want your application to show
up in the menus, use the following .desktop header:
NoDisplay=true

Bug-Buddy source contains a utility to check *existing* .desktop and
.server files (src/verify-desktop-files). I ran this and manually
checked if the products/components were actually valid. I did not yet
file 'bugs' for application without version information, but I plan to
do that soon.
Fer created a list of applications linking to libgnomeui (which calls
bug-buddy if gdb is installed) without .desktop / .server files:
  http://dyckola.homelinux.org/gnome-offending-binaries.txt (there might
be some false positives in there)

Applications with errors in their .server / .desktop file are tracked in
the following bug:
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=348827
List bugs of known not-yet-fixed broken apps:
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/showdependencytree.cgi?id=348827&hide_resolved=1

Note that Bug-Buddy 2.16.0 currently only allows to file bugs against
bugzilla.gnome.org. 

-- 
Regards,
Olav