GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 348829
Errors in .desktop file break bug-buddy support
Last modified: 2006-11-11 01:49:29 UTC
The gnumeric.desktop file has the following problems: - Lacks (valid?) X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Component (make sure to get the case exactly right) Full reason why this is needed: Starting with Bug-Buddy 2.15.0 all programs wanting to make use of Bug-Buddy must have a .desktop file. Also the .desktop file must contain a few Bug-Buddy headers. These are: X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Bugzilla=GNOME <-- Mandatory X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Product=XXX <--Mandatory X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Component=YYY <-- Mandatory X-GNOME-Bugzilla-OtherBinaries=ZZZ <-- Optional, only if you application has several binaries X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Version=X.Y.Z <-- Optional, but highly recommended. This should need expansion from configure script, so if you want this you need a application.desktop.in.in to expand here @VERSION@ (application.desktop.in is used by intltool for translations). This headers have actually been in use since 2002, except that Bug-Buddy 2.15.0 will now require: a) A .desktop file containing at least the mandatory information b) Given product and component MUST exist on bugzilla.gnome.org Having the X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Version is optional, but highly recommended. The server will automatically change versions like 2.15.90 to 2.15.x, so this doesn't have to be changed in the .desktop file. I recommend keeping the real version in the desktop file as I might put this in a comment. Users will only be able to fill in their email address and a 'What were you doing when the application crashed?'. Version information will not be possible to select anymore. This is why having the X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Version is highly recommended. If you want Bug-Buddy support, but do not want your application to show up in the menus, use the following .desktop header: NoDisplay=true
I am tempted to reassign to bug-buddy. We cannot know what component is not working. We need the user to select that. Olav, how to we tell bug-buddy to do that?
Can't you determine which component crashed from the stacktrace after you see the bugreport come in? I do not believe in letting a user analyse a stacktrace and selecting a component upon that (also that is currently not possible anymore). I suggest putting 'General' as the component. Note that the normal bug-buddy interface to report enhancements/non-crasher bugs will be hidden. Meaning that bug-buddy will not show up anymore in the menus. It is still possible to call bug-buddy with a command line parameter to show this interface, but only if you had something like that in the Gnumeric menu. I do see a 'report a bug' menuitem, but that goes directly to the site. Oh, and to avoid a possible confusion... X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Version relates to the Gnumeric version, not the GNOME version.
While I could certainly put General there, I would really prefer for the user to select "Excel import/export" or "Printing". That does not involve analyzing stack traces. Obviously if a valid stack trace is submitted, I can generally figure out where, but the failure rate for stack traces is pretty high.
After reading lot of bug reports from users along the years, I think that we cannot ask them to select a product/component anymore. Tech users can do it, but 99% of people using computers cannot do it (or do it wrongly) so the only way we have is asking the user what he was doing "printing", "importing an excel sheet" or whatever. I am sorry that this is more work for the developer, but I guess that it is the only way we can manage to get enough reporting
I really don't think this is the right way to go, but I have added "General" for now. Fixed in the development version. The fix will be available in the next major release. Thank you for your bug report.