Backtracing, Invalidated Bugs and Quality

[Krzysztof Lichota]

2008/8/20 Null Ack <nullack at gmail.com>:
> I'm not convinced that the strategy of asking users to install
> specialised debugging packages is the right way to go. I see a very
> low hit rate with this working in practice.

It is not surprising. Asking people to install multi-megabyte packages
and reproduce bug is not going to work as:
1) the bug often cannot be reproduced (and the user does not want to
be hit by a bug again)
2) the user is requested an extra work he does not understand
3) some users do not have resources to install debug packages as they are huge

IMO the solution would be to create debugging symbols server.
Microsoft had these for years. The information about debugging symbols
is only needed on server, client only sends (in simplest version) MD5
sum of library and address offset, which is transformed into the
symbol by symbol server.

-- 

	Krzysztof Lichota