Version: (using KDE KDE 3.1.2) Installed from: Gentoo Packages Compiler: N/A N/A OS: Linux Currently, KDE and bugs.kde.org are quite seperate. When something crashes, KCrash provides a clickable link to bugs.kde.org and suggests the user comes here to submit a bug. When they look in the "Help" menu, they are given a similar option, being invited to "Report bug". Though bugs.kde.org is definitely one of the best and most accessible bug tracking systems around, its integration could be improved. In GNOME, despite not having such a good web based bugs system, they do have a brilliant tool called Bug Buddy. This is essentially this bug reporting wizard made into a GUI application in its own right, and comes up when an application crashes. It guides the user through the reporting process, looking for similar bugs, and then at the end asks for the person's e-mail address (so they have already committed to filling in the other information). Bug buddy is far more inviting than having to open a web browser and going to bugs.kde.org, and inviting more bug reports is always good, right? This idea could be further extended by including two options in the "Help" menu: "Report a problem" and "Request a feature", which each load up the GUI app in the right mode. There could also be an icon on the desktop or taskbar that opens this application, or something like www.kde.org/support, just to encourage people to report bugs and feature requests (though of course distributors may remove the icons). On the one hand, developers don't want a flood of feature requests, but on the other hand at the moment you are probably stopping many less technical users from making their requests, and so not serving their needs as well. The language could also be less technical. The word "bug" should be replaced by "problem", so you report a problem, not a bug. "Bug", even to me, sounds like maybe I should be reporting what's going wrong in detail, when I may be so ignorant as to be able to say little more than "I clicked on this button and it crashed". If KCrash then said I could report the problem so it might get fixed, and then guided me through a wizard taking the info and submitting my simplistic description with the error stack trace, both sides would benefit. Basically, I think bugs.kde.org is wonderful, but it could be better integrated :)
When glancing at bugzilla.gnome.org (e.g. "Most Frequently Reported Bugs") it seems that Bug Buddy does a terrible job at preventing duplicate reports, I think that this works best on the server side. More bug reports (e.g. automatic reports) are NOT always good: We don't have the resources to handle each bug report immediately. We surely don't want just more but better reports. Too many problem are already reporting "problems" which are totally unrelated to KDE. If "bug" encourages to report what's going wrong in detail the better. :-)
you seriously misunderstood the concept of a bug database. It's not a support forum, it's a database of defects. The more detailed they are described, the more the reporter knows about the problem, the more likely it will be fixed. There is little use in having "problems" hanging around in the database making it impossible to find things one can actually fix. While a link between a crash dialog and the report wizard makes sense, it was so damn often misused, we had to take it out again. Our most valuable resource is time (as it's our free time - see the irony?), so anything that the user can do, he should do - checking for duplicates is one of the things. I invite you to look at http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=69333: Redhat made a packaging error, it was fixed - still this bug tool swamped the database/mailing lists with 700 duplicates. And someone having a serious problem will not be seen as noone wants to work on bug reports anymore.
Well just because GNOME implements the duplicates checking poorly, doesn't mean to say KDE should ;-) I agree that you don't want to be swamped by useless duplicates, but assuming the program could handle duplicates well (which surely wouldn't be all that difficult? the web based system handles them well), then is it not of benefit to KDE and importantly to users to have problems reported so they don't go unnoticed? I'm thinking of this both from the point of view of developers knowing about bugs, and from the point of view of the accessibility of KDE. How can KDE pretend to be accessible to all if only technically minded people are going to submit feature requests?
Subject: Re: KCrash should integrate with bugs.kde.org better On Friday 25 July 2003 10:38, Tom Chance wrote: > I'm thinking of this both from the point of view of developers knowing about bugs, and from > the point of view of the accessibility of KDE. How can KDE pretend to be accessible to all if > only technically minded people are going to submit feature requests? Opening a web browser isn't exactly the most complex operation Greetings, Stephan
*** Bug 103223 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 104974 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
IMHO Kcrash should include the "Send Bug Report" button, linking it to the Report Bug Wizard. It makes all the sense and is time saving.
And it could also have the option to init an install debug packages as well from some sort of advanced menu. The submit bug part would be a great feature from the kcrash interface. Its not just about opening a browser - its wading through loads of pages of guff that could easily be autodetected, like software version and so on. IMO, this would be a great feature.