Bug#803675: [Reportbug-maint] Bug#803675: reportbug: unable to report bug on kernel
control: merge 669038 771545 891468
On 6 Nov 2016 Ben Finney wrote:
> On 01-Nov-2015, Sandro Tosi wrote:
> > it's a limitation of the GTK interface, please use the text
> > interface
>
> What is the limitation, specifically?
Reportbug provides `getkey` and `yesno` helper functions for interactive
bug scripts. These only work in a terminal. Most of the resulting
problems could be overcome by creating a graphical yesno, but...
> What improvement could be made in the Gtk interface, to resolve this
> limitation?
... the problem is that bug scripts are not limited to these helpers for
their user interaction.
Possible solutions:
(a) Do not run the bug scripts at all when the GTK UI is used. This
would also prevent non-interactive bug scripts from running and will
lead to less complete bug reports.
(b) Try to detect interactive bug scripts by using a heuristic such as
"uses yesno helper", and interrupt the bug script at this point (only
when using the GTK UI, of course). Non-interactive bug scripts will
still be run. Interactive bug script not using `yesno` will still cause
hangs. I think that the vast majority of interactive bug scripts (no
numbers, though) does use yesno, so it might not be too bad.
(c) Restrict allowed user interaction from bug scripts to a limited set
of helper functions, and file bugs against all packages whose bug
scripts use other mechanisms involving interactivity. This introduces a
signficant new limitation and will require many maintainers to rewrite
their bug scripts. Also good luck finding all affected packages.
(d) Remove the reportbug GTK UI so that interactive bug scripts are
supported in all available UIs. Clearly no good "solution".
There is now a merge request implementing (b):
https://salsa.debian.org/reportbug-team/reportbug/merge_requests/6
Any better ideas?
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