Apport in stable releases [was: Re: Do you really want developers to be on this list]

[Scott Kitterman]

On Thu, 13 Nov 2008 12:48:40 +0100 Martin Pitt <martin.pitt at ubuntu.com> 
wrote:
>Markus Hitter [2008-11-13 11:56 +0100]:
>> While we can't "fix" developers, we can put more automatic helpers  
>> into place:
>> 
>>   - Keep Apport enabled even on stable releases. Hiding bugs doesn't  
>> help.
>
>We don't disable Apport in stable releases because we want to hide
>bugs. The reasons are, in descending importance:
>
> * core dumps potentially contain a lot of private/sensitive
>   information which is almost impossible to check for a casual user.
>   Yes, apport points out to not send a report if you did something
>   private, and bugs are private by default, but still..
>
> * During testing the development release we already get tons of crash
>   reports, so we should already know (or even have fixed) the
>   most common crashes. The others aren't really common, and hard to
>   reproduce, etc., which is why we would not fix them in stable
>   releases *anyway* (both from an SRU policy perspective, as well as
>   being a manpower issue).
>
> * Collecting crash information and sending it to LP takes a lot of
>   CPU, IO, and network bandwidth, and it doesn't make sense to waste
>   all this, and create a sense of expectation that the crash will be
>   fixed in a stable release, when we know upfront that it won't.
>
I think these are all good reasons.

I have heard people discuss post-release regressions due to SRU/security 
updates.  I was chatting with another developer last night who said he'd 
found Hardy very stable at release and less so as it got updated.

Perhaps Apport could be taught to roll the dice and return crash reports in 
some fraction of cases post-release (perhaps 5 or 10 percent).  This would 
help us catch regressions.

Scott K