[Libreoffice-bugs] [Bug 126488] There's no URL with crash report in Linux

[bugzilla-daemon at bugs.documentfoundation.org]

https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=126488

--- Comment #18 from Adalbert Hanßen <adalbert.hanssen at gmx.de> ---
This bug report was opened to improve the process of bug elimination especially
in the current development versions. For the development process getting
detailed information on the circumstances is even more important than for
released stable versions for three reasons:

1. Bugs which are eradicated in the development version don’t get through to a
released version.
2. Probably there are more bugs in it than in a released version.
3. Users of the development versions tend to have a more technical look on bugs
and probably can report them more thoroughly than a standard user, since one
might expect them to have more software-constrution-related attitude than a
standard user.

Of course every user who encounters a should report them, no matter what
her/his background is. 

With the intention of the starting point in view, closing the thread as NOTABUG
is not reasonable. There is much room for improvement in bug reporting, as
indicated in the opening of this thread.

Finally, even in the statement closing as NOTABUG, the bureaucratic argument
itself should have triggered the question: How can we improve the processing of
crash reports for the current development version? 

Being able to upload the symbols to the server might be fundamental to evaluate
crash reports if they pertain to different versions. I can’t judge if it would
increase the effort to create and to distribute the development version in a
state which would enable uploading the symbols to the server also for them.
Also the number of crash reports coming in that way might increase the amount
of data to be handled by the server significantly. If this is the case, still
the questions

* What did the user do immediately before the crash happened (if he can
remember it)? In my case the crashes happened so much like a flash from the
clear sky, that I was unable to give such a hint.

* What additional Information to classify the crash can the user provide if it
can’t be provided automatically (like the type of crash and a minimal version
of the caller stack)?

* Since the crash message explicitly asks the user
„Please check the report and if no bug report is connected to the crash report
yet, open a new bug report at bugs.documentfoundation.org. Add detailed
instructions on how to reproduce the crash and then show crash ID into the
crash report field. ...”
there should be a way to enter something about the circumstances. 
But the user has to know.

* Where does he find the crash report? Is it in his file system? Where?
* What exactly shall he check for?
* Where can he enter the description of what he did before the crash happened?

So the development version should behave similar to the released version at
least by creating such minimal crash reports at least locally, even if they are
not uploaded as a whole in case of a crash.

So even if it might be impractical to handle crash reporting in the development
version exactly as in the released versions, I would advocate to replace the
crash reporting part of it by another one, better suited for this special
purpose (especially since – if this is the case – crash reporting already
differs from that of the released version: Why not improve that further to
improve the development process). 

Adding questions about the circumstances of the crash from the user’s
standpoint as indicated in my original post should be considered even for the
released versions. When I searched for bugs in software I often considered
questions like those proposed above. This additional information often helps
more than automatic dump reports. Of course dump reports play an important
role, but their use is in the second step after one as an idea what might have
gone wrong.

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