[maemo-developers] Crash reporting (was: Package promoting)

[From: Eero Tamminen]

Hi,

ext Naresh Mehta wrote:
> Good comments on both the sides. Some of the points made by developers
> are very valid. But a query though. Why can't Maemo make a crash
> reporting system  like the one Android has?

There's been a Crash reporter available for several years & Maemo
releases, it's even open sourced:
http://wiki.maemo.org/Documentation/devtools/maemo5/crash-reporter
http://repository.maemo.org/pool/maemo5.0/free/c/crash-reporter/

However, the collected crash information isn't publicly available
because crash data (coredumps[1], logs etc) can contain private
information (passwords, URLs etc).  Because of this, the program
will show a prominent warning about this when it's installed and
asks confirmation before uploading each core dump.


The crash information wouldn't usually be that useful for the 3rd
party developers because their packages create rarely debug package
needed for getting backtraces (Maemo infra doesn't create those
automatically as it's Debian derived. RedHat and Ubuntu package
building infra create those automatically though if developer has
built his sources with debug symbols).


> In short, a crash reporting system like Android

Do you have a link to what kind of information their crash reporting
system provides for 3rd party developers and users?


	- Eero

[1] On Maemo5 and earlier ARM versions use of minimal crash information
wasn't possible like on Desktop Linux systems because getting
backtraces out of ARM binaries core dumps needed debug symbols
(which aren't installed on the devices).

Harmattan & Meego toolchains can & will automatically generate unwind
tables for all binaries.  With those it's possible to get working
backtraces on the device even without debug symbols (debug symbols
are then needed only to resolve the backtrace addresses to correct
function/method names, but this can be done outside the device).