Apport now supports interactive package hooks

[Martin Pitt]

Hello fellow developers,

So far, Apport package hooks were limited to collecting data from the
local system. However, a lot of debugging recipes and standard bug
triage ping pong involves asking the reporter further questions which
need reponses from a human. This can range from a very simple
information message box “Now, please plug in the camera which is not
detected” until a complex decision tree based on the symptoms the user
sees.

As discussed at UDS Barcelona [1], Apport now supports this, as of
version 1.3 (just uploaded to Karmic). The GUI still leaves something
to be desired, and I plan to improve it. But the API for hooks won’t
change any more, so you can now begin to develop your interactive
hooks.

Please see my blog [2] for how such an interactive hook might look
like, and [3] or [4] for the documentation.

I also updated https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Apport/DeveloperHowTo
accordingly.

Enjoy, and don't hesitate to contact me for assistance, help, and
suggestions for improvements!

Thanks,

Martin

[1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DesktopTeam/Specs/Karmic/SymptomBasedBugReporting
[2] http://martinpitt.wordpress.com/2009/06/08/interrogation-with-apport-hooks-qt-developer-needed/
[3] /usr/share/doc/apport/package-hooks.txt
[4] http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~apport-hackers/apport/trunk/annotate/head%3A/doc/package-hooks.txt

-- 
Martin Pitt                        | http://www.piware.de
Ubuntu Developer (www.ubuntu.com)  | Debian Developer  (www.debian.org)
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