Re: ABRT frustrating for users and developers

[Jiri Moskovcak]

On 01/17/2010 05:57 PM, Christoph Wickert wrote:
Am Sonntag, den 17.01.2010, 15:53 +0100 schrieb Jiri Moskovcak:
On 01/16/2010 04:01 PM, Christoph Wickert wrote:
I know that APRT is still very young technology, but after 2 months it's
time for a interim conclusion. For me the conclusions are:
Pro:

        * abrt is a help for developers: I received one positive feedback
          from a developer: The backtrace looks "interesting" but cannot
          be fixed without a major rewrite of the app.

        * abrt helps to fix bugs sometimes: So far abrt helped me to fix
          three crashes in two apps (in Fedora and upstream).

Con:

        * Unfortunately 3 out of ~ 40 reports is not a good percentage.


I'm open to any ideas how to improve this.

Sorry, I have no idea, except:
      1. Don't accept incomplete backtraces.
This is to do, but what should be the threshold? should we accept only 
backtraces generated with all required debuginfo?
      2. Make a comment and the description how to reproduce the bug
         mandatory.
OK, will do.
      3. Add a timestamp to the backtrace because many people submit
         their bugs later and they don't recall when it happened. This is
         important for me, I need to know it it happened before or after
         a certain update.
OK
      4. Add n-v-r of the affected packages, so it is obvious if people
         submit old bugs.

Do you mean NVRs of libraries the crashing program was using?

      5. Instead of hashes the missing debuginfo packages should be
         listed with n-v-r, so people can install them manually.

This could be a problem. ABRT determines the required debuginfo package 
using build_id. It calls yum --enablerepo=*debuginfo* --quiet provides 
/usr/lib/debug/.build-id/bb/11528d59940983f495e9cb099cafb0cb206051.debug 
and I don't know any other way how to map build_id to package name if 
yum fails.

Jirka

        * As already pointed out by Michael Schwendt some time ago, there
          were some good traces in the beginning but then they became
          unusable. Starting with abrt 1.0.2 it got better again but I
          still get bogus reports sometimes.

        * As a maintainer abrt causes a lot of work. You have to respond
          to the tickets, ask for details, explain how to install
          debuginfo manually and tell people that their


How this differ from any other bugs? ABRT just helps users to report
bugs so we get reports even from users who wouldn't bother otherwise.

The difference is that most of these users don't bother to write a
simple comment, to install debuginfo or respond to the bugs they filed
with ABRT at all. Another huge difference is the workload for me.

        * abrt is frustrating for maintainers: Upstream refuses to accept
          the backtraces generated by abrt. Happened to me three times.


If the backtrace is complete then there is no reason why upstream
shouldn't accept it, but if there is a problem with installing debuginfo
then there is nothing ABRT can do (except to prevent user to send a
report, but what's the threshold here?).

Does ABRT prefent them from sending these reports? I don't think so
because I'm still getting bogus reports with ABRT 1.0.3.

        * abrt is frustrating for users: Today I received my first "No
          need for a reply...I will stop submitting tickets."


They can always remove it and go back to previous reporting mechanism
using bugzilla web form.

Most of them wouldn't do that, but people who submit something with ABRT
are disappointed that their bugs are getting closed. If you don't do
something, you cannot be disappointed.

Regards,
Christoph


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