RFC: remove traceback from "newer branch format than your bzr"

[Maritza Mendez]

Russel... Don't apologize.  Your brand of grumpiness is exactly what
bzr needs to evolve from a tool by developers for developers into a
wider audience.  Your suggestions are pretty close to what MS has
figured works well.





On 8/11/09, Russel Winder <russel.winder at concertant.com> wrote:
>
> On Tue, 2009-08-11 at 15:14 +0200, Jelmer Vernooij wrote:
>
>> Strack traces are the equivalent of segmentation faults in Bazaar,
>> when they are displayed there is *always* a bug, never expected
>> behaviour. I think hiding the detailed debug information here is a red
>> herring, we should work on fixing those bugs instead.
>>
>> The stack traces provide a lot of useful information. I fear without
>> them we'll add another round trip to the interactions in bug reports
>> trying to extract them.
>
> Sorry but I am not going to even try and hide my grumpiness on this, as
> underlying this comment is a lack of appreciation of the more or less
> complete disinterest of users in anything of interest to developers.
>
> Users do not care about core dumps, segmentation faults, stack traces,
> etc., etc.  Nor do they care about logs or bug reports.  They actually
> don't care that much about errors in computer-related things (*). What
> they care about is getting the current job off their desk so they can
> get paid and go home.
>
> (*) M$ has managed to educate most users into believing that computers
> are always prone to falling over and that rebooting is the correct way
> of dealing with all errors.  Most users have little or no respect for
> the computer, the software, or the people involved in creating it.
>
> So how to deal with this complete discord?
>
> Bazaar should trap any and all exceptions that are about to cause a user
> visible stack trace.  The information that might then be relevant to the
> developer should be prepared potentially for sending to a bug reporting
> system -- in this case Launchpad.  The user should be informed that
> there was a problem -- in language that they appreciate and can relate
> to -- and then they should be offered the opportunity to send in the bug
> information to help further development of the product.
>
> Now the really sensible bit . . .
>
> The user should be able to press Yes or No.
>
> If they press No then they don't care and will likely just reboot their
> computer.  Either that or they will think it a conspiracy to get hold of
> personal data just as all the other error reporting systems are.  OK so
> this is a sad side-effect of a prevalent attitude to current error
> reporting, but that doesn't make it the wrong thing to do.
>
> If they say yes then an bug report should be sent in to Launchpad
> without the user having to deal with stack traces or actually a bug
> report, they need never know what Launchpad is.
>
> Just because M$ has this sort of a bug reporting strategy doesn't mean
> it is a bad thing.
>
> Leave users in control of doing feedback, but do not make them be an
> integral part of all the detail.  Automate things.  Make things easy for
> the user.  Minimize the hassle and the workload for the user.  Think
> about how to make the user do the things you need them to do in order
> for you to do your job, clear the work off your desk, get paid (**) and
> go home.
>
> (**) Except that in the FOSS community a lot of people don't get paid
> for the work they are doing.
>
> Now the hard bit . . .
>
> With any luck there will be a steady stream of duplicate bug reports.
> It cannot be outside the wit of clever developer to have a mechanism for
> filtering the bug reports and folding duplicates.
>
>
> OK I better stop grumping, and go and take some more pain killers . . .
>
> --
> Russel.
> =============================================================================
> Dr Russel Winder      Partner
>                                             xmpp: russel at russel.org.uk
> Concertant LLP        t: +44 20 7585 2200, +44 20 7193 9203
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>