GNOME Bug buddy (was: Being nice to testers ...)

[Paul Sladen]

On Fri, 13 Jan 2006, Phillip Susi wrote:
> having the debug symbols around [is] a good idea idea [..] with KDE apps
> the nice bug window with the backtrace.  Gnome doesn't do that does it?

The GNOME bug buddy could do with some major Love.  Currently when something
crashes, it asks if you want to report it to the developers and then the
first question it asks is "what application crashed?".

This is utterly wrong.  The exception catcher knows which binary crashed and
can run a 'dpkg -S' to locate the package that it came from.  The backtrace
code should be copied from somewhere else, (as you say the KDE version has
this, as does MS Windows) and the result including installed-package version
of dependances all needs feeding straight into a Malone bug-report so that
errors aren't made in transciptions.

The report should probably be tagged that it didn't come from a human and
used for trend recording rather than immediate processing if developers are
worried that the system is going to get overwhelmed.

The bug buddy should only ask two questions;  (1) What was the last thing
you remember trying to do before the program crashed, and (2) your email
address---which should be cached and remembered after the first submission.
Anything else should be option and minimal hassle to the user.

	-Paul
-- 
This country is covered in white fluffy snow.  Helsinki, FI