Crash database requirements (was: The need for apport hooks (was: Re: SRUs for typo fixes in descriptions))

[Bryce Harrington]

On Mon, Aug 08, 2011 at 04:25:30PM +1000, Christopher James Halse Rogers wrote:
> On Sun, 2011-08-07 at 22:46 -0700, Bryce Harrington wrote:
> > On Mon, Aug 08, 2011 a 07:17:52AM +0200, Rick Spencer wrote:
> > > On Sat, 2011-08-06 at 15:46 -0700, Bryce Harrington wrote:
> > > > > 
> > > > > <side comment> I think we are doing it wrong: we should collect
> > > > > crashes on all supported releases. </side comment>
> > > > 
> > > > I agree.  As designed, apport files a new bug report for each crash,
> > > > which can quickly lead to excessive numbers of dupe bug reports (there
> > > > are ways of making apport auto-dupe, but this takes effort to set up and
> > > > isn't always 100% reliable).  This can quickly become unmanageable
> > > > especially for packages that lack someone to keep an eye on the bug
> > > > reports.
> > > > 
> > > > In any case, these types of reports post-release are most useful in
> > > > aggregate rather than as individual bug reports.  If they were filed in
> > > > some ultra simple crash database (with no signup required of the user)
> > > > we could get most of the value without incurring a lot of extra bug
> > > > labor.
> > > Has this very thing not been proposed? We should discuss doing this for
> > > 12.04.
> > 
> > It's been propsed and discussed previously, like ScottK mentioned.  The
> > issue has been finding someone with time to work on it.
> 
> I know it's been proposed and discussed previously, and I believe Robert
> Collins both wants something similar for Launchpad and has done some
> work towards making it happen.

Yes, there's an open bug report against LP for it I ran across at one
point.

> I don't know if we've actually written down what we want out of a crash
> database, though.  Do we have a requirements document for one?  If the
> Launchpad team wanted to devote some time to adding a crash database do
> they know what we want out of such a beast?

I agree, that seems like an important first step.  At this point it's
unclear whether Launchpad's needs overlap with ours or if they're highly
divergent.

> Is there a LEP for a crash database?  If not, perhaps we could gather
> requirements in this thread and then write one?

There was a LEP started several years ago but it was abandoned and the
spec is considered obsolete by the LP folks.  There are no active LEPs
that I know of.

Bryce