Public bug reported:
I used Deja Dup for the first time today.
I like that Deja Dup is usable by neophytes and newbies. Unfortunately,
when it fails, which it did for me, it leaves a rather sour impression.
In particular, I'm referring to Deja Dup's infamous "FAILED WITH AN
UNKNOWN ERROR" followed by a wall of debugging information. Please
consider that a backtrace (see attached screenshot) can look
intimidating to many people and make them think, "Oh, this program is
broken in such a serious way it would take a programmer to fix. I'll
have to use something else."
I understand that sometimes things happen that we haven't coded for and
we need to throw a vague exception to help with debugging. But, given
how many "Unknown error" messages show up when I Google, it seems Deja
Dup doesn't cover some of the basic, common problems that everyday users
can fix on their own.
For example, the screenshot I attached is of an error that doesn't
warrant a backtrace: the user had chosen to backup to a directory which
was unwritable. I concede that ideally Deja Dup would hold the user's
hand to walk them through figuring out *why* the directory is
unwritable, but that's not what I'm asking for.
I am requesting that Deja Dup have a policy of never dying with an
"Unknown error", unless absolutely unavoidable.
I do not expect this to take a lot of extra work or coding. In my
example screenshot, Deja Dup could have solved the problem by instead
asking the user to choose a different directory.
Thank you.
** Affects: deja-dup (Ubuntu)
Importance: Undecided
Status: New
** Attachment added: "Screenshot from 2017-01-03 03-53-43.png"
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1653691/+attachment/4799413/+files/Screenshot%20from%202017-01-03%2003-53-43.png
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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1653691
Title:
"Failed with an unknown error" could be more helpful
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