On 11/04/2010 01:05 AM, Adam Williamson wrote:
My question would be 'why'? There seems to be an assumption that an open bug report you can't fix is a serious problem; of course in a sense it is, but then, it's not as if, if we remove or otherwise change abrt, software is going to magically stop crashing. It's going to crash just as much. There just won't be bug reports associated with the crashes. I guess what I'm asking is what actual harm/damage are these reports causing, beyond the time it takes to look at the report and figure out whether you can fix it? Why is the fact that people have experienced crashes you haven't yet figured out how to fix a reason to stop maintaining the software?
Amen to that. My own experience is that I am not a packager, but I care about the packages I use---so if there are bugs, I want to be able to file reports, and in some cases I was able to fix bugs, e..g. in drgeo and BLT.
In my case, it ended up being an efficient method of communicating with the package manager. I found a bug, I sent a patch, it went in through testing, and became part of Fedora. I had a good experience with the system.
I filed maybe a dozen bug reports. The emails are slightly annoying (why do I need to know about new CC:s on the bug list), but I am surprised that it would lead someone to quit using the system.
I think some improvements could be made in the user interaction; perhaps the initial ABRT screen should have an opt-out to all automated email for those who don't think they'll get involved in the bugzilla process. The fixers can still pull the email from the report and ask questions in personal emails.