RE: [Evolution] Trouble with Contacts

[Dan Hensley <dan hensley home com>]

On Sat, 2001-09-22 at 06:45, Stephen Witkop wrote:
> On Fri, 2001-09-21 at 15:57, Rodrigo Moya wrote:
> > On Fri, 2001-09-21 at 21:03, Kevyn Nguyen wrote:
> > > Hi all,
> > >
> > > I'm not a programmer... just curious about the evolution product :)
> > >
> > > > From reading the postings... I wanted to know if there is a debug
> > > mode?  example, if the user runs into a problem, he/she can start
> > > Evolution in this mode that would be sent to support evolution com
> > > and the support person would know what's going on.  
> > >
> > > Maybe have it in the "Help"... then "Debug Mode"  something like
> > > that... or from commandline switch that would activate this mode?
> > >   
> > this is already available. When evolution crashes, the GNOME bug report
> > tool (bug-buddy) is started, gets a backtrace of the binary that
> > crashed, and lets the user fill in some information about the bug, and
> > send it over to bugzilla.
> >
> > If you use evolution and haven't seen that yet, it means that evolution
> > has never crashed for you? :-)
>
> The problem with this is that the bug-buddy is not activated when only a
> component dies (most of the time) like the already documented bug where
> the mail component dies when deleting an email.

If you know what component is crashing (i.e. evolution-mail), you can
run it in a debugger, reproduce the crash, and then extract a meaningful
stack trace (same as what bug-buddy gives you).  There are instructions
on how to do this in the archives, but here's a quick run-down:

1.  In a shell, type gdb evolution-mail.
2.  In gdb, type 'run'.
3.  In another shell, a few seconds later, start evolution.
4.  Reproduce the crash.
5.  type 'bt' in gdb to get a backtrace of what happened when it
crashed.

Of course this assumes that the crash is repeatable.  If it's not, then
it's going to be more difficult for the developers anyway.

Dan