https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=162526

--- Comment #6 from Geoff Kuenning <[email protected]> ---
> We don't bother trying to report the source of those problems to the user, 
> the user cannot in any case do anything about it.

This is an incorrect statement; I stand as a glaring counterexample.

It is true that some users wouldn't be able to correct the problem. It is also
true that many others, like me, would.  But what is 100% clear is that users
can only correct the problem if they know what it is; simply crashing at
startup is utterly uninformative.  That's true regardless of whether the crash
is due to an assert(false) or to a violation of C++ standards.

> You are, however, welcome to submit a patch to improve the situation. We have 
> a pretty liberal patch acceptance policy.

I took a look at trying to add code to identify the failed library and pop up a
dialog box saying what's wrong.  But the level of abstraction in the C++ code
is sufficiently complex that it's not a simple task for an unfamiliar developer
to even pop up a "hello world" dialog box.  Unfortunately I don't have the time
to learn the deep details of the scalc code.

However, what I can do is to suggest a message that a knowledgeable developer
could display:

scalc could not start because one of its libraries (libfoobar.so.1) was
incompatible or unavailable.  Please make sure that both LibreOffice and
libfoobar.so.1 are up to date and try again.

I would guess that somebody familiar with the code could make and test that
change in well under an hour.

-- 
You are receiving this mail because:
You are the assignee for the bug.

Reply via email to