status wontfix quequotion [2012-09-05 19:34 -0000]: > I'm actually happier with "Won't Fix" than "Invalid".
*shrug* fine for me :-) Changed. > In my opinion, "Report the problem..." should not just +1 a statistic, It doesn't; it sends the full data, including stack traces, log files, etc. But access to this is restricted to developers, to avoid accidentally publishing private data to the world. > It's also vague language and should be revised to make it more clear > what users should expect. It says "send an error report to help with fixing this problem", which pretty much hits the reality. It does not in any way give a guarantee about fixing the bug, or response time, etc. If many people have the same problem, it will bubble up in errors.ubuntu.com, and we regularly fix the top crashers there. > ie. "Report the problem for statistics" and "Report the problem on > Launchpad" to distinguish the two completely different meanings of this > phrase. Correct. This pretty much reflects the two different modes that the development vs. the stable releases are in. > Here's how I imagine a better apport: > > 1. Apport catches a bug. > > 2. Apport asks the user if they want to report the problem and / or > restart the program. > > 3. If the user would like to report the problem, apport attempts to > collect all relevant data and checks launchpad for existing bug reports. > 4A. If apport finds any conditions that may restrict the validity of the > report (out of date packages, unusual configurations, packages from > outside ubuntu's repositories, etc) it informs the user that it will not > be able to file a valid report, Until here this is what happens. > but can provide instructions on how to prepare the system to file a > valid report and how to restart from this point later, and also that > the user can be shown search results from launchpad about possibly > relevant bugs based on information collected so far if they like. But Apport doesn't knwo what to do there. If you use a third-party package, and that crashes, then that same crash may or may not affect the Ubuntu package as well. Also, you probably use the third-party package for some reason, so telling the user "uninstall that/go back to the Ubuntu version" would not be particularly helpful and realistic in my opinion? Also, we did all this to avoid having to send users of stable releases to Launchpad. That's a developer tool, requires an account, and is not quite the thing that we want to inflict on users. > 4B. If apport finds exactly the same issue in another bug report, it > informs the user that the issue has already been reported and the user > can be added to and shown the bug report on launchpad if they like. That actually does happen. > 4C. If apport finds no restricting conditions or previous reports of > exactly this bug, apport will ask the user if they'd like to create a > new bug report. > > 5. If the user would like to create a new bug report, then apport will > take them to launchpad to go through the steps. That's again what we deliberately do not want to do in stable releases (the "won't fix" part). We _will_ not fix every crash in stable releases, for both resource and stability reasons. Asking users to spend a lot of time with setting up accounts, filing bug reports, etc. it just wasted time and creates false expectancies. > If it's just sending statisticsto a database, and not telling me, > without at least showing me an active bug report relevant to my > issue, how am I supposed to belive that the problem will ever be > solved? This part is already in the works. I. e. if we have a fix for a problem that affects you, you will get a notification that you need to upgrade to this package version X.Y to correct it (and a button to do that). It will most likely not land in 12.10 yet, but 13.04 seems realistic. > Ubuntu needs to send the message that bugs will be handled with good > communication and accessible developers - two things that open source > software can uniquely provide. Right, but that only scales up that much -- we can handle a couple of thousand users on the development release, but not millions of requests from stable release users. > I understand that not every developer can be called to account for > every issue in every software package available for linux, but > apport could go a long way toward making the face of linux "customer > service" look better. It's all a matter of putting scarce resources to their best use. Spending 24/7 on triaging millions of Launchpad bugs and doing nothing else will not help anyone :-) Thanks, Martin -- Martin Pitt | http://www.piware.de Ubuntu Developer (www.ubuntu.com) | Debian Developer (www.debian.org) -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1036965 Title: Apport reports to errors.ubuntu.com, not Launchpad bugs To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/apport/+bug/1036965/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
