Merge lp:~otto/apport/apport into lp:~apport-hackers/apport/trunk

[Otto Kekäläinen]

[Otto Kekäläinen (otto)]

I am tired of reading bug reports like
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mariadb-5.5/+bug/1392539
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mysql-5.5/+bug/1209201
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mysql-5.5/+bug/1065033
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mysql-5.5/+bug/1097295

A small into in each Apport bug would set the user submissions like "nothing" into context and help people reading the bug reports to understand why it starts with the word "nothing"

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Hello Otto,

Indeed these comments are annoying, but to be honest for crashes they can just be ignored. But this problem can't really be addressed in Apport itself, I'm afraid: The bug reporter won't see this additional text when (s)he files the report, this is only going to appear later on.

Also, the low-level problem_report API cannot be brutalized like that -- it's also being used for other backends and consumers, like http://errors.ubuntu.com. The composition of the report happens in apport/crashdb_impl/launchpad.py, so to do this cleanly, write_mime() should get a new prefix argument which launchpad.py then passes in.

However, note that I still don't think this is actually helping a lot -- it is very clear that a report is filed through Apport, from the description, tags, and attachments. So what would be more helpful is to tell Launchpad some message when filing the bug (like "Please describe the exact steps which lead to this problem").

Thanks!

review: Disapprove

[Otto Kekäläinen (otto)]

Hello!

Consider the report
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mysql-5.5/+bug/1065033 that
starts with the word "nothing".
Is there any way to cleanly prepend that with a small introduction
line _for the bug readers_ so that it would be obvious what and why
there is text in the beginning of the report?

If you want to help us who solve these bugs and those upstream who
participate in solving these bugs, please make the bug reading process
as user friendly as possible. Not explaining anywhere in the bug
report itself why there is "nothing" in the beginning is bad.

About compatibility with errors.ubuntu.com etc: this text section
before the key-value pairs is free-form. Adding something there will
not break anything.

2014-12-11 16:17 GMT+02:00 Martin Pitt <email address hidden>:
> Review: Disapprove
>
> Hello Otto,
>
> Indeed these comments are annoying, but to be honest for crashes they can just be ignored. But this problem can't really be addressed in Apport itself, I'm afraid: The bug reporter won't see this additional text when (s)he files the report, this is only going to appear later on.
>
> Also, the low-level problem_report API cannot be brutalized like that -- it's also being used for other backends and consumers, like http://errors.ubuntu.com. The composition of the report happens in apport/crashdb_impl/launchpad.py, so to do this cleanly, write_mime() should get a new prefix argument which launchpad.py then passes in.
>
> However, note that I still don't think this is actually helping a lot -- it is very clear that a report is filed through Apport, from the description, tags, and attachments. So what would be more helpful is to tell Launchpad some message when filing the bug (like "Please describe the exact steps which lead to this problem").
>
> Thanks!
> --
> https://code.launchpad.net/~otto/apport/apport/+merge/244312
> You are the owner of lp:~otto/apport/apport.

--
Check out our blog at http://seravo.fi/blog
and follow @ottokekalainen

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

I fully agree that having these bogus descriptions isn't helpful at all. But do you really think that having the "nothing" prefixed by "This bug was filed with Apport." is any more helpful? It still doesn't tell the bug reader what the problem is all about. The subject will do that as we can auto-generate that.

The "lines of text are filled in by the user" part is just describing how Launchpad and every other bug tracker works, so IMHO this is just redundant.

This is one of the reasons why we moved to http://errors.ubuntu.com for crash reports in stable releases. At some point we want to stop sending crash reports to Launchpad, at which point this will be a lot more steamlined.

Unmerged revisions

2884. By Otto Kekäläinen on 2014-12-10

Add descriptive introduction to bug report to give context on what the first line is about.

=== modified file 'problem_report.py'
--- problem_report.py	2013-09-19 14:26:33 +0000
+++ problem_report.py	2014-12-10 16:18:21 +0000
@@ -451,7 +451,11 @@
 
         keys = sorted(self.data.keys())
 
-        text = ''
+        text = '''
+        This bug has been filed via Apport.
+        The first lines of text are filled in by the user
+        to a field titled "Please describe the bug in a few words":
+        '''
         attachments = []
 
         if 'ProblemType' in keys: