errors.ubuntu.com and upgrade crashes

[Seth Arnold]

On Tue, May 13, 2014 at 10:24:20AM +0100, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
> apps are expected to keep running during upgrades, then fix the
> upgrade process so that apps can't run during the upgrade. Don't just
> filter out those crashes as if they aren't happening.

For years, Mozilla and then Firefox would start showing the strangest
errors if it wasn't restarted during an upgrade. It was easy to forget or
otherwise not notice Firefox among the many updates being performed, and
wonder why four or five days later dialog boxes or menus weren't working
correctly. (Especially since the person performing the upgrade may be on a
different continent than the person running Firefox. Nothing says they're
the same person...)

At some point Firefox added a handy dialog box to alert running instances
that it has been upgraded and should be restarted to run safely. The
person using Firefox simply clicks "restart" and six seconds later is back
where he or she left off and the system runs reliably again.

Perhaps LibreOffice could adopt this mechanism; if it is not prepared to
be updated while running, it could be adjusted to inotify a sentinal file
to know to display a "please restart" dialog and button to avoid awkward
interactions and crashes.

Thanks
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