abrt and bugzilla

[Matthew Booth]

Firstly, I'd like to say I think abrt is fantastic. Call what follows a 
nit-pick. It's just a pretty in-your-face nit.

After installing F12, after a short while I got presented with a couple 
of SELinux errors. This is nothing unusual in a new Fedora release, but 
this time it asked me for my bugzilla login details and offered to 
submit the bug automatically for me. Fantastic! The lazy person in me 
who wants to do the right thing truly appreciates this. Turns out I 
wasn't the first person report them, so it added me to the CC list.

There are, however, still 2 significant problems with this. Firstly it 
needed a BZ login. I happen to have one, and I use it often enough that 
I don't need a password reset every time. However, I'll bet I'm in the 
minority of Fedora users[1]. To get useful bug reports from the unwashed 
masses we need anonymous submission, or at least submission which 
doesn't require any kind of account creation or authentication.

Secondly, I'm now being subjected to bugzilla spam every time anybody 
else does the right thing. I have received 24 bugzilla spams in the last 
12 hours telling me that other people have been added to the CC list. 
This information is interesting to people who want to know how to 
prioritise bugs, but it's not interesting to me, the submitter. I can 
remove myself from the CC list, but the lazy person in me whispers it 
might just be easier not to submit bugs.

If you've used Windows, you'll be familiar with the Windows send bug 
report dialog. I've once seen it additionally give me useful 
information. After submission it told me a fix was available and sent me 
to a web page which told me where to get an updated third-party driver. 
That's what I really want to know: can I fix it?

So, turning that into some feature requests:

1. Can Fedora enable anonymous/unauthenticated bug submission.
2. Can abrt not add duplicate reports to the CC list.
3. Can abrt/Fedora please ensure that original abrt reporters don't get 
email either.
4. Can abrt/Fedora track abrt submitted BZs and report only when there's 
a fix available.
5. Can abrt give me a list of submitted BZs so I can browse them if I 
want to?

I suspect much of this would require infrastructure changes, so it would 
extend beyond abrt. However, I think this is the last mile required to 
get bug reports from absolutely everybody.

Thanks again,

Matt

[1] As is everybody on this list! I know you all have BZ accounts, and 
know the passwords.
-- 
Matthew Booth, RHCA, RHCSS
Red Hat Engineering, Virtualisation Team

M:       +44 (0)7977 267231
GPG ID:  D33C3490
GPG FPR: 3733 612D 2D05 5458 8A8A 1600 3441 EA19 D33C 3490