Re: Apport in stable releases [was: Re: Do you really want developers to be on this list]

2008-11-14 Thread Markus Hitter

Am 14.11.2008 um 03:25 schrieb Scott Kitterman:

 Perhaps Apport could be taught to roll the dice and return crash  
 reports in
 some fraction of cases post-release (perhaps 5 or 10 percent).   
 This would
 help us catch regressions.

I don't see a reason why Apport is automatically switched off at some  
point in time. If a user is enthusiastic enough to run alpha and beta  
releases (s)he already agrees to Apport's doing, so it would be  
reasonable to maintain this state beyond the update to the stable  
release.


MarKus

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Dipl. Ing. Markus Hitter
http://www.jump-ing.de/





-- 
Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list
Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: 
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss


Re: Apport in stable releases [was: Re: Do you really want developers to be on this list]

2008-11-14 Thread Scott Kitterman
On Fri, 14 Nov 2008 07:51:53 + Matthew East [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
On Fri, Nov 14, 2008 at 2:25 AM, Scott Kitterman [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
wrote:
 I have heard people discuss post-release regressions due to SRU/security
 updates.  I was chatting with another developer last night who said he'd
 found Hardy very stable at release and less so as it got updated.

 Perhaps Apport could be taught to roll the dice and return crash reports 
in
 some fraction of cases post-release (perhaps 5 or 10 percent).  This 
would
 help us catch regressions.

Would enabling it in -proposed help with that?

I don't know if the installed system knows which pocket a package came from 
or not.

I see three sources of a potentially useful density of reports post-release:

1. Regressions in -proposed/-updates.

2. Regressions from -security updates.

3. Packages used more significntly by non-developers that don't get a lot 
of use before release.

I do think if there's a reasonable way to report all crashes from 
-proposed, that would be a good thing.

Scott K

-- 
Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list
Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: 
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss


Re: Apport in stable releases [was: Re: Do you really want developers to be on this list]

2008-11-14 Thread Scott Kitterman
On Fri, 14 Nov 2008 09:44:00 +0100 Markus Hitter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

Am 14.11.2008 um 03:25 schrieb Scott Kitterman:

 Perhaps Apport could be taught to roll the dice and return crash  
 reports in
 some fraction of cases post-release (perhaps 5 or 10 percent).   
 This would
 help us catch regressions.

I don't see a reason why Apport is automatically switched off at some  
point in time. If a user is enthusiastic enough to run alpha and beta  
releases (s)he already agrees to Apport's doing, so it would be  
reasonable to maintain this state beyond the update to the stable  
release.

I find Pitti's reasons reasonably compelling.  If we left it on 
post-release, it would be for everyone, not just people who installed 
pre-release.  We'd be flooded with stacks of dupes mostly to existing bugs 
and no one to triage, let alone fix them.

Scott K

-- 
Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list
Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: 
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss


Re: Apport in stable releases [was: Re: Do you really want developers to be on this list]

2008-11-14 Thread Martin Pitt
Scott Kitterman [2008-11-14  5:46 -0500]:
 I do think if there's a reasonable way to report all crashes from 
 -proposed, that would be a good thing.

I agree. With a bit of apt-cache policy magic we can detect this on
the client side.

Problem is that in order to do that, we need to catch the initial
crash first and write it to disk, i. e. we would get the CPU/IO
overhead again by default. That alone doesn't worry me too much, but
it might be an issue in certain environments.

Martin

-- 
Martin Pitt| http://www.piware.de
Ubuntu Developer (www.ubuntu.com)  | Debian Developer  (www.debian.org)

-- 
Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list
Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: 
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss


Re: Apport in stable releases [was: Re: Do you really want developers to be on this list]

2008-11-14 Thread Lars Wirzenius
pe, 2008-11-14 kello 12:36 +0100, Martin Pitt kirjoitti:
 Problem is that in order to do that, we need to catch the initial
 crash first and write it to disk, i. e. we would get the CPU/IO
 overhead again by default. That alone doesn't worry me too much, but
 it might be an issue in certain environments.

It's because of the CPU and I/O overhead that I find myself disabling
apport: when I develop software on my laptop, and am debugging a
segfault, it is highly frustrating to have apport take control of the
machine every couple of minutes.

Then I sometimes remember to put it back on. Perhaps it would be helpful
for idiots like me if apport could offer to disable itself for the rest
of the day, or until the next boot?


-- 
Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list
Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: 
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss


Apport in stable releases [was: Re: Do you really want developers to be on this list]

2008-11-13 Thread Martin Pitt
Markus Hitter [2008-11-13 11:56 +0100]:
 While we can't fix developers, we can put more automatic helpers  
 into place:
 
   - Keep Apport enabled even on stable releases. Hiding bugs doesn't  
 help.

We don't disable Apport in stable releases because we want to hide
bugs. The reasons are, in descending importance:

 * core dumps potentially contain a lot of private/sensitive
   information which is almost impossible to check for a casual user.
   Yes, apport points out to not send a report if you did something
   private, and bugs are private by default, but still..

 * During testing the development release we already get tons of crash
   reports, so we should already know (or even have fixed) the
   most common crashes. The others aren't really common, and hard to
   reproduce, etc., which is why we would not fix them in stable
   releases *anyway* (both from an SRU policy perspective, as well as
   being a manpower issue).

 * Collecting crash information and sending it to LP takes a lot of
   CPU, IO, and network bandwidth, and it doesn't make sense to waste
   all this, and create a sense of expectation that the crash will be
   fixed in a stable release, when we know upfront that it won't.

 While this doesn't fix bugs by it's self, it greatly helps to fix  
 them after the fact (and timely educate developers about their  
 practices).

Right, but we have more crashes in LP than we can ever keep up with,
so there's enough fodder to report to upstreams, debug, and fix. :-)

 Additionally, this opens the door to get some automatic measure about  
 the quality of drivers or other software. Count open bugs and you  
 know what you roughly can expect. If you count too many of them, drop  
 the hardware in the compatibility list.

Hardware bugs are not automatically reported. Filing bugs manually
(Help - Report a bug, or using ubuntu-bug) still works normally in
stable releases. We didn't disable that, nor was it ever discussed to
do so.

Martin
-- 
Martin Pitt| http://www.piware.de
Ubuntu Developer (www.ubuntu.com)  | Debian Developer  (www.debian.org)


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature
-- 
Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list
Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: 
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss


Re: Apport in stable releases [was: Re: Do you really want developers to be on this list]

2008-11-13 Thread Scott Kitterman
On Thu, 13 Nov 2008 12:48:40 +0100 Martin Pitt [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
wrote:
Markus Hitter [2008-11-13 11:56 +0100]:
 While we can't fix developers, we can put more automatic helpers  
 into place:
 
   - Keep Apport enabled even on stable releases. Hiding bugs doesn't  
 help.

We don't disable Apport in stable releases because we want to hide
bugs. The reasons are, in descending importance:

 * core dumps potentially contain a lot of private/sensitive
   information which is almost impossible to check for a casual user.
   Yes, apport points out to not send a report if you did something
   private, and bugs are private by default, but still..

 * During testing the development release we already get tons of crash
   reports, so we should already know (or even have fixed) the
   most common crashes. The others aren't really common, and hard to
   reproduce, etc., which is why we would not fix them in stable
   releases *anyway* (both from an SRU policy perspective, as well as
   being a manpower issue).

 * Collecting crash information and sending it to LP takes a lot of
   CPU, IO, and network bandwidth, and it doesn't make sense to waste
   all this, and create a sense of expectation that the crash will be
   fixed in a stable release, when we know upfront that it won't.

I think these are all good reasons.

I have heard people discuss post-release regressions due to SRU/security 
updates.  I was chatting with another developer last night who said he'd 
found Hardy very stable at release and less so as it got updated.

Perhaps Apport could be taught to roll the dice and return crash reports in 
some fraction of cases post-release (perhaps 5 or 10 percent).  This would 
help us catch regressions.

Scott K

-- 
Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list
Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: 
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss


Re: Apport in stable releases [was: Re: Do you really want developers to be on this list]

2008-11-13 Thread Matthew East
On Fri, Nov 14, 2008 at 2:25 AM, Scott Kitterman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 I have heard people discuss post-release regressions due to SRU/security
 updates.  I was chatting with another developer last night who said he'd
 found Hardy very stable at release and less so as it got updated.

 Perhaps Apport could be taught to roll the dice and return crash reports in
 some fraction of cases post-release (perhaps 5 or 10 percent).  This would
 help us catch regressions.

Would enabling it in -proposed help with that?

-- 
Matthew East
http://www.mdke.org
gnupg pub 1024D/0E6B06FF

-- 
Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list
Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: 
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss