Making it easier to submit bug reports

[Telsa <hobbit aloss ukuu org uk>]

Blame Miguel for the cc line, if you get it three times :)
Sorry in advance for length, too :( Maybe I should have stuck it on the
web somewhere and posted the url, but I have nowhere to put it as my
connection is up and down at the moment.

> > I have a few ideas about what might make it easier to submit
> > bug reports, too. I'n not sure where the best place to send them
> > is, but if people are interested, I can send them here? (Or
> > wherever is better.) 
> 
> you can post it here.  You could also CC gnome-devel-list@gnome.org,
> and gnome-gui-list@gnome.org.
> 
> I would love to improve this system.
> 
> best wishes,
> Miguel.

I wish I could summarise more effectively. 

Here goes.

If you're clicking on a program off the menus in Gnome, you don't
necessarily know what they're called. In "System/System", there is
an 'About Myself' option. I found a problem with the program, and 
I had trouble reporting it because first, I didn't know what program 
it was running, and second, I didn't know what package it came from.

(I found the first by using 'top', and abandoned the second when I
found my problem happened outside Gnome. I sent the bug to Red Hat's
bugzilla instead, since it didn't really seem to be a Gnome issue.)

However, where do I find what packages a program is part of and thus
(I imagine) which package I should refer to in a bug report? (I have
pluralised packages, because I saw "gnome-terminal" as a separate
package on bugs.gnome.org, sent one in for that, and got a reply
saying it had gone to gnome-core-maint. That's confusing, too!)

My concrete suggestions would be: 

	if I am running something that's clearly a Gnome program, I can
	click on "About..." and get the program name and version. I would
	_love_ it if programs that are part of packages also included which
	package they're in. I would like to see that. That's my number
	one beg-beg-beg-please.

	Somewhere obvious there should be a way to find out what program
	a menu item is invoking. The Gnome menu editor will show you this
	for your own additions and for some of the standard menu items. But 
	with the example above about userinfo, if I look in the menu editor,
	and look at System/System, of the options on my menu, the only
	one that is mentioned by the menu editor is GnoRPM. If this is
	a bug with the editor, then I'll add it, but if there's a reason
	why this isn't shown, I'd counter it with the point that this
	is one of the obvious places to look to see what a menu item does.
	Having only some of them is disconcerting.

	If the menu editor isn't the right place, then a menu-viewer which
	tells you what command is run when you select items from the main
	menu would be great (and a wonderful example for people heading
	off into the command-line for the first time :)). It would save
	a lot of time. Especially if it told you what package that was
	part of :)

	A local copy of something like http://bugs.gnome.org/Reporting.html
	would be excellent for those folks who pay by the minute for 
	online time. Saves having to fire up a browser and connect and
	pay to read it :)

My more wishlist (and more complicated) suggestions:

With the 'About' button on Gnome applications, as well as the authors, 
the name of the program, the package name (see above!) and a link to any 
help, a 'Bugs' section. Possibilities below:

	This might be used to either link to anything relevant in 
	/usr/doc/program/TODO (although the gnome programs on my RH6.0
	system have README, NEWS and Changelog - no TODO items.)

	You could have a link to the local copy of "reporting bugs"
	there. 

	You could even have a "query bugs.gnome.org for bugs on this 
	package" option. Maybe? (Don't return all bugs by default though
	there's	eighty-five in one of them, and that would swamp someone
	new! Perhaps just that bugs exist, and to see them, fire up
	browser at (relevant page) to look at the subject lines for them.)

	Going further, you could take a partial leaf out of bashbug
	(not the 'automatic post to Usenet' part, though, please!)
	and have a button that you click on which generates the right
	headers for a bug report, and the contents of uname -a (for
	Linux systems, dunno the right ones for other ones) or whatever
	is generally relevant. Then the user would just have to explain
	what they did and what happened.

I realise that ideally you want people to try it a few times to make
sure it's reproducible, and I can see people fearing that having some
of those options will result in two hundred submissions of "Help. I
clicked something. How do I get out of"  and then thirty blank lines
or something :) But that doesn't follow for all of them.

Again, sorry for length. The biggest problem I have with bugs is
working out what package they're related to so that I can submit 'em,
and the automatic "You didn't put in a package version! This is not
good..." reply from bugs.gnome.org doesn't help. It needs to tell you
how you find that out.

I hope some of those are useful suggestions. Oh, and if the first person 
to reply says where follow-ups should go in future, that might avoid 
spamming three lists, perhaps? 

Telsa