Handling GNOME Bugs

The new GNOME crash handler is great. Unfortunately I get quite a few duplicates every day of a particular bug that has recently been fixed. I'm sure I'm not the only developer with this problem of fighting with bugzilla.

Perhaps the wording of the crash dialog should say:

What were you doing when the application crashed?
You should aim to provide developers with enough information to replicate the crash, and not details about what you are drinking.
Please can you check the product bugzilla page to check for duplicates before sending crash details. [Check Now]

Or, even better:
A similar bug has already been reported and the developers have released a fix. Please make sure your system is up to date, and if so file this in your distribution bug tracker.

Or at least:
The application crashed and you have no debugging symbols; this bug report is both a waste of time for you and the application developer who will just ask for a better stacktrace with debugging symbols.

Or in an ideal world:
The application crashed and you have no debugging information available. The required files have now been automatically downloaded, and if the bug happens again your bug report will be sent to developers.

Published by

hughsie

Richard has over 10 years of experience developing open source software. He is the maintainer of GNOME Software, PackageKit, GNOME Packagekit, GNOME Power Manager, GNOME Color Manager, colord, and UPower and also contributes to many other projects and opensource standards. Richard has three main areas of interest on the free desktop, color management, package management, and power management. Richard graduated a few years ago from the University of Surrey with a Masters in Electronics Engineering. He now works for Red Hat in the desktop group, and also manages a company selling open source calibration equipment. Richard's outside interests include taking photos and eating good food.

One thought on “Handling GNOME Bugs”

  1. Actually, in an ideal world, it would be: The application crashed and you have no debugging information available. The required files have now been automatically downloaded, and I can now put up a useful stacktrace to send this report to the developers. Now, I see from the stacktrace that a similar bug has already been reported and the developers have released a fix. Please make sure your system is up to date, and if so file this in your distribution bug tracker.

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