ABRT frustrating for users and developers

[Jiri Moskovcak]

On 01/16/2010 04:01 PM, Christoph Wickert wrote:
> I know that APRT is still very young technology, but after 2 months it's
> time for a interim conclusion. For me the conclusions are:
>
> Pro:
>
>        * abrt is a help for developers: I received one positive feedback
>          from a developer: The backtrace looks "interesting" but cannot
>          be fixed without a major rewrite of the app.
>
>        * abrt helps to fix bugs sometimes: So far abrt helped me to fix
>          three crashes in two apps (in Fedora and upstream).
>
> Con:
>
>        * Unfortunately 3 out of ~ 40 reports is not a good percentage.
>

I'm open to any ideas how to improve this.

>        * As already pointed out by Michael Schwendt some time ago, there
>          were some good traces in the beginning but then they became
>          unusable. Starting with abrt 1.0.2 it got better again but I
>          still get bogus reports sometimes.
>
>        * As a maintainer abrt causes a lot of work. You have to respond
>          to the tickets, ask for details, explain how to install
>          debuginfo manually and tell people that their
>

How this differ from any other bugs? ABRT just helps users to report 
bugs so we get reports even from users who wouldn't bother otherwise.

>        * abrt is frustrating for maintainers: Upstream refuses to accept
>          the backtraces generated by abrt. Happened to me three times.
>

If the backtrace is complete then there is no reason why upstream 
shouldn't accept it, but if there is a problem with installing debuginfo 
then there is nothing ABRT can do (except to prevent user to send a 
report, but what's the threshold here?).

>        * abrt is frustrating for users: Today I received my first "No
>          need for a reply...I will stop submitting tickets."
>

They can always remove it and go back to previous reporting mechanism 
using bugzilla web form.

> Can somebody confirm my observations?
>
> Regards,
> Christoph
>
>

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