[Ubuntu-bugcontrol] Apport Hooks Task Force

[Sense Hofstede]

2009/9/20 Andrew SB <a.starr.b at gmail.com>

> On Sun, Sep 20, 2009 at 10:00 AM, Sense Hofstede <sense at qense.nl> wrote:
> > What should this operation do? The idea is to create an 'apport-hook'
> tag,
> > report bugs against all packages (that don't have a hook yet) and start
> > watching the bugs. Then we can write hooks and watch the tag for bugs
> that
> > have a proper one attached. The Bugsquad could do the buggy part of the
> > task, the MOTU and Ubuntu Developers can afterwards add the hooks to the
> > packages (and help writing them).
> > If we'd get the greatest part of our archive to have Apport hooks, it'll
> be
> > much easier for us to cope with the many bug reports that inevitably are
> > going to come when Karmic is released and we'd be able to learn how to
> deal
> > with those kind of bug reports before the LTS will be there.
>
> Are you suggesting filing bugs against _all_ packages without hooks?
> That seems a bit over the top.
>
> > Maybe it would be a good idea to devote a HugDay to this? It would at
> least
> > be useful to create a wiki page an send an announcement to explain the
> > procedure of adding hooks to packages.
>
> This already exists more or less:
>
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Apport/DeveloperHowTo
>
>
> Some thing that I think would be extremely useful is a list of
> _specific_ packages that hooks would be useful for. It seems as if
> writing a hook is pretty trivial if you know any python at all. For
> the most part, apport hooks simply collect logs or configuration files
> that might be useful in debugging. A great task for the bug squad
> could be to collect a list of common things that they need to ask for
> when debugging specific packages. I know that I personally would love
> to help out and write some hooks, but the packages that I'm mainly
> interested in don't really have a need for them so far.
>
> If there was a wiki page somewhere that mentioned that every time we
> get a bug report for package foo we ask the reporter for foo.log, that
> would be the perfect place of some one to jump in and write a hook. A
> massive list of packages without hooks would be much less helpful.
>
> Thanks!
>
> - Andrew Starr-Bochicchio
>
>
Reporting bugs against every package would indeed result in a lot of new bug
reports, but I do think that it would be a good way of keeping track of
the implementation process. We could use python-launchpadbugs to make the
task easier.
The wiki page https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingProcedures is a true
treasure; it contains a lot of information about what to look for in most
mainstream packages and is a primary source for bug triagers, although some
parts are slightly outdated for Karmic because of the switch to DeviceKit
and Upstart. We can use that as a source for writing Apport hooks.

If we'd first create the bugs requesting Apport hooks, we can then list them
and start working on them during one or more special HugDays. Although it
might look like a lot of work, it would kickstart the use of hooks.

The fact that Apport is already use by more distributions -- apologises for
the mistake -- poses an interesting challenge. We could send the hooks
upstream, but there is a chance they would be rejected. If that would
happen, other distributions would have go to Ubuntu for the hooks. It would
be easier for them if there was some central repository. Maybe it would be a
good idea to start an Apport Hooks project that collects all available hooks
so they can be easily distributed among the different users of Apport.

Regards,
-- 
Sense Hofstede
/ˈsen.sɜː ˈhɒf.steɪdɜː/
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