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Idea #9516: Enable "apport" by default

Written by Mr. Kanister the 5 Jun 08 at 13:16. Category: System. Related project: Nothing/Others. Status: New
Rationale
While being developed (Alpha 1-6, Beta) "apport" is enabled for easy bug reporting, since the user doesn't have to collect the important information himself.

The question is: Why is "apport" disabled in final releases by default?

Are there not sometimes programms that just hang and have to be killed by the user? Are we not sometimes thinking "Should I report this?".

The process "apport" provides an easy to use bug reporting tool to improve Ubuntu, so it should be enabled by default.

Someone could say: "Oh no, i don't wont to see "apport" everytime a programm crashes!". For this case it should provide a simple checkbox: "Don't ask me again."


At the moment, if you want to use apport, you have to enable it in the file "/etc/default/apport".
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Solution #1: Auto-generated solution of idea #9516
Written by Mr. Kanister the 5 Jun 08 at 13:16.
Ubuntu Brainstorm was updated in January 2009. Since the idea #9516 was submitted before this update, its rationale and solution are not separated. Please vote accordingly, and if you have the necessary rights, please separate the rationale from the solution. Thanks!
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Solution #2: Bug and Crash reporting Wizard
Written by salih.emin the 9 Apr 09 at 08:48.
Mostly, the Alpha,Beta,RC series are used by people (like me :P) who want to contribute by sending apport crash reports for the benefit of Ubuntu Linux.

The majority of users wait for/prefer stable releases so they don't even know what is this wonderful "apport" and most likely they don't even have or want a launchpad account... They are just consumers...

This is a problem because they are the majority so too much information for bugs is being lost this way...

What i propose is a deferent approach in apport when we are dealing with stable releases. For this, LaunchPad should collect Anonymous Bug Reports from users that don't want/have an account.

This is a simplified scenario :
--> Totem crashed.... Apport pops up by telling "We are sorry for inconvenience, We are ready to inform this issue to Canonical, would you like to proceed"
--> Then user has 2 buttons "Proceed" and "Cancel"
--> User presses "Proceed", then there is a simple empty box where user is kindly asked: "Please provide as in few words what where you doing before the problem occurred"
--> User can write in few words what was supposed to happen but instead something went wrong.
--> And lastly user presses "send"... and everybody is happy!

All this report is send Anonymously but nevertheless on this hypothetical wizard should have in one way or another an "Advanced" way of reporting where user is proposed to create in few minutes an LaunchPad Account.

Propose your solution

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Comments
ubby wrote on the 5 Jun 08 at 16:29
Good idea!

flammon wrote on the 6 Jun 08 at 11:16
The "Don't ask me again" checkmark is important. It should be "Don't ask me again" and "Don't ask me again for this application"

jamesw (Ubuntu developer) wrote on the 4 Jul 08 at 18:52
Hi,

Apport is enabled by default, but only on development releases.

The reason for this is that there is little that can be done about problems in already released versions as they are frozen, and so troubling the user doesn't give them much benefit.

I don't know if this idea is "won't fix", but it's a concious decision to turn it off at the moment.

Mr. Kanister wrote on the 17 Jul 08 at 11:43
You are right by saying that "there is little that can be done about problems in already released versions as they are frozen", but I think it is important that the user is able to report a problem, even if it can not be fixed in current version.

There are always problems that take longer to be fixed, but the more problems are reported the more can be fixed.

For that reason I think we should provide "apport" in final releases, too.

mgunes (Ubuntu developer) wrote on the 17 Jul 08 at 12:03
Another reason Apport is not enabled by default in stable releases is that we simply lack the kind of bug triage workforce that can deal with the estimated volume of bug reports coming from the relatively huge number of users that utilize those releases. If this changes in the future, along with our stable release update policy [1], Apport may be enabled by default, at least for certain components of Ubuntu, but for now, it's best to keep it disabled.

If you'd like to help triage bugs, [2] is a good place to start.

[1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/StableReleaseUpdates
[2] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HelpingWithBugs

tchalvakspam wrote on the 7 Jan 09 at 16:03
I can't say that I understand this, mgnunes, you're saying that too much automated bug reporting is a disadvantage because there aren't enough people who would be able to sort through/confirm/categorize the resulting reports? To me, that implies a failure of the report catching system, not a lack of need to have the reports at all.

Even duplicate automated bug reports work to prioritize the importance and frequency with which bugs are occurring, to indicate which bugs should take precedence. No-one imagines that all bugs will always be able to be fixed, but if one bug has 10000 bug reports and another has 2, then at least developers can know which one would be more useful to work on.

At very least it seems that it should be easy to turn on bug reporting via a gui tool, so that a user with the interest in starting to automatically report bugs can easily begin to do so. Currently apport requires command line editing to even turn on.


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