Features/ABRT

CrashCatcher

Summary

The tool to help non-power users with bug reporting, making it as easy as a few mouse clicks.

Owner

• Name: Zdenek Prikryl Jiri Moskovcak

• email: zprikryl@redhat.com, jmoskovc@redhat.com

Current status

• Targeted release: Releases/11
• Last updated: 2009-02-04
• Percentage of completion: 20%

Detailed Description

This feature semi-automatically provides information about defects and crashes on user system. It collects necessary data about the crash, generates a report with all information and based on user interaction sends it to some bug reporting system. The gaol is to have this tool heavily plugin-able - so it can be used for any compiled/scripting language and bug reporting system (trac, BZ, 3rd party bug reporting tool ...)

Benefit to Fedora

Ease of bug reporting and quick response from maintainers based on info from CrashCatcher should make Fedora more stable and thus more attractive for users.

Scope

what has to be done:

• pluginable architecture
• daemon for detecting crashes
• authentication system
• system detecting if binary belongs to our package (PackageKit support)
• add-ons for languages
• plugins for reporters, databases of crashes, specific applications
• GUI and TUI

It shouldn't affect any part of Fedora, it's desing allows to easilly disable or remove this application completelly.

How To Test

• Install CrashCatcher with C/C++ language plugin.
• Run some app. This app has to be written in C or C++.
• kill -s SIGSEGV <pid of app>
• See if CrashCatcher detects it.

User Experience

• If an application crashes user is notified by trayicon (or message in log) and simple wizard will guide him through bug reporting process. All required information are gathered automatically, bug reporting should be easy even for less experienced users.

Dependencies

• dbus
• gtk2
• PackageKit
• PolicyKit
• Archer
• sqlite
• gtkmm
• Python
• glade

Contingency Plan

None necessary, revert to previous release behaviour :)

Documentation

• CrashCatcher home page

Release Notes

There is no simple tool for debugging programs and reporting bugs in Fedora and providing usefull information needed by package maintainer to fix a bug is often time-consuming and sometimes out of the skill range of an ordinary Fedora user. This tool should fill this gap and help users to fill a report with all required information in just a few mouse clicks.

Comments and Discussion

• See Talk:Features/CrashCatcher