Re: RFC: gnome-dbg
Hi,
On Thu, Mar 01, 2007, Josselin Mouette wrote:
> 1. Making bug-buddy downloading them automatically when needed;
> this needs to integrate a lot of intelligence in bug-buddy
> itself, as it would have to know which packages to download to
> generate a useful backtrace. The user would also need to wait
> for the download to complete.
I don't know how complex it is to achieve this, I suppose there are
some examples in other apps such as time-admin in ways to spwan the
package manager to install stuff and how to test for installed stuff?
For me, this opens a more general question about what we want bug-buddy
to be for us: do we want to interface it to the Debian BTS or to send
the report upstream? Do we need a gateway where we could filter
bug-buddy reports from the Debian bug-buddy?
Another thing I have in mind is that we need some more formal package
installation service; I'm not sure of the progress of the Ubuntu folks
on the "codec issue": they are working on a way to pull/suggest *.debs
which are useful to decode certain formats. The bug-buddy problem
sounds a similar type of problem: when faced to a situation where some
additional packages would be useful, locate the appropriate packages
and suggest/install them. I don't think their current solution is
generic in this regard though.
(I know this is kind of futuristic, but I thought I would share it
nevertheless.)
> 2. Making the gnome-desktop-environment metapackage recommend
> gnome-dbg, and gnome depend on it, but only in the development
> cycle, not in stable releases.
Sounds good.
I'm not sure whether your position changed on *.ddeb debug packages;
that would also be helpful IMO. I didn't try the SIGSEGV kernel
handler that I think is nowadays in use in Ubuntu, but from what I've
heard it gives good results in matching the installed packages with
debug packages and producing useful backtraces. This is certainly
harder a project to achieve in Debian than in Ubuntu, but I don't see
what we would have to lose with such a feature; I certainly see we
would get debug symbols for programs, and not only for libraries like
we mostly have now.
Cheers,
--
Loïc Minier <lool@dooz.org>
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