Hi,
If we are planning to massively increase the number of daily build
packages in PPAs then I think it behooves us to also solve this problem,
other wise we are not only throwing away useful information, but also
pouring buckets of water on to the slope when we know there will be
a freeze tonight.
Currently there is no certain place to report bugs for packages from PPAs.
They are not an LP bug target. Sometimes they should go against the
Ubuntu package (some Ubuntu developers request this now for their "bleeding
edge" PPAs), more often against the upstream. There is no way to indicate
this currently either, so even if we know then it's not easy to tell e.g.
apport where to file the bugs.
When I said we are throwing away useful information I meant this: install
a package from a PPA, make it crash. Apport will pop-up and tell you that
it crashed and ask you if you would like to proceed with filing a bug, you
answer “yes.” It will think for a minute and then tell you that you can't
as it is not an “official Ubuntu package.” You can install apport-retrace,
retrace the crash report manually, gather the needed bits, find where to
report the bug and do so yourself, but that's so 2009.
Therefore I think we need to look at improving the situation. We can't
make it all perfect without some very big changes across a lot of projects,
but we can make some big practical differences.
The aim is to have lots of people testing the latest code, let's enable
them to report issues with it easily, otherwise we run the risk of it being
a big waste of time.
Here is a strawman proposal for how it should work, please amend or propose
alternatives where you know of something better:
1. Allow a PPA to specify a bug target. Either an LP project or package,
or a URL of an external bug tracker.
2. Export this information in the Packages file using the existing Bugs
field.
3. Extend apport to use this information when it detects the package is
not from Ubuntu.
4. Where the target is on LP use much the same system as it currently
does. Where the target is not on LP, but uses a bugtracker it understands,
make use of that knowledge to file the bug. Otherwise dump the useful
information to a text file, open the specified URL and tell the user
to attach the file(s).
5. Possibly extend apport to retrace the reports locally, so that this
does not have to be done after they are reported. (Duplicating the
infrastructure we have in Ubuntu for everything would probably be a
mistake.)
Thanks,
James
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