[Avocado-devel] RFC: ABRT integration

[Jakub Filak]

Avocado developers,


I came across an Avocado trello card requesting integration with
systemd-coredumpctl. As a developer working on Automatic Bug Reporting Tool
(ABRT) I got interested in it. I contacted Lukas Doktor with a question of
what purpose the integration should be and with an offer to engage ABRT too.
After short chat he asked me to send an RFC to this mailing list. So here
you are Lukas.


Let me first briefly introduce ABRT. Despite its name ABRT is more about
detecting software (and hardware) problems and the reporting is just a one
step in the whole processes of handling a problem. Currently ABRT is capable
of detecting core files, uncaught Python exceptions, uncaught Ruby
exceptions, uncaught Java exceptions, Kernel oopses (including those stored
in pstore), Kernel vmcores and Machine Check Exceptions. ABRT provides
several ways accessing detect problems which includes command line tools
(abrt), GUI tools (gnome-abrt), Python API, C API and D-Bus interface. If
interested, you can find more about ABRT at:
http://abrt.readthedocs.io/


I propose to enhance Avocado to become aware of ABRT and include detected
problems in test results. Here is my initial proof-of-concept commit:
https://github.com/jfilak/avocado/commit/e3258706bdfffb8ddddb2f1bc51328af2958617d


Some technical details:
- the implementation will capture only problems of a current user
- a proper configuration of PolicyKit can allow any user to read all system
  problems
- there can be several simultaneous connections to ABRT D-Bus connection


Please have a look at my patch and let me know if ABRT integration is
something you are interested in.


Should you have any question, please contact me or any ABRT developer on
crash-catcher at lists.fedorahosted.org or on #abrt.




Kind regards,
Jakub