xorg.conf file validator

[Brian Murray]

On Thu, Sep 04, 2008 at 01:59:10PM -0700, Bryce Harrington wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 04, 2008 at 08:29:02PM +0100, Matt Zimmerman wrote:
> > On Thu, Sep 04, 2008 at 11:27:42AM -0700, Bryce Harrington wrote:
> > > On Thu, Sep 04, 2008 at 11:03:25AM +0100, Matt Zimmerman wrote:
> > > > On Mon, Aug 25, 2008 at 06:52:47PM -0700, Bryce Harrington wrote:
> > > > > Thanks again for identifying all of the xorg.conf's from launchpad for
> > > > > testing X-Kit against.  This has helped make X-Kit more robust.
> > > > > 
> > > > > We realized that this validator might be useful to you too for automated
> > > > > QA purposes.  Alberto has written a short script using python-xkit that
> > > > > checks if a given xorg.conf file is valid.
> > > > > 
> > > > > If you have scripts which review incoming bugs, you could use this
> > > > > script on any that have xorg.conf files attached.
> > > > > 
> > > > > As you can see from Alberto's testing, nearly 1 in 10 xorg.conf's people
> > > > > submit are broken in some way, so running this validator on them could
> > > > > help flag them quickly.
> > > > 
> > > > If it's reliable and accurate, perhaps this would be a good feature to add
> > > > to the apport hook for the X server, to prevent reports of bugs caused by
> > > > invalid configurations.
> > > 
> > > Not a bad idea, although I *think* that the class of bugs it'd detect
> > > don't overlap with the class of bugs that would trigger apport.  Invalid
> > > xorg.conf's result in a normal server exit with an error message.
> > 
> > Remember that apport is used for more than just crashes; we're encouraging
> > testers to use it for reporting any bug, because it will attach relevant
> > information.  If you're receiving bug reports from systems with invalid
> > xorg.conf, this would help to filter those out.
> 
> True, however I don't think this will account for many bug reports.
> With the xorg.conf shrinking, it's becoming less and less common to see
> failures due to invalid xorg.conf's.  I'd rather see some invalid
> xorg.conf's in launchpad than risk scaring people away from using
> ubuntu-bug.  With brian's work we should have little problem flagging
> these issues from our end.

Right, I am actively going through all the package bugs that the
ubuntu-x-swat team is subscribed to and running any xorg.conf
attachments through the validator and updating the bug reports
appropriately.

Bugs that contain an invalid xorg.conf file will be tagged
'invalid-xorg-conf' and bugs that contain xorg.conf files that all pass
validation with be tagged 'valid-xorg-conf'.  There are also some other
bits done with adding a comment and modifying attachment names.
 
-- 
Brian Murray                                                 @ubuntu.com
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