Error Handling

[AF]

Right now errors are written to infolog.txt and when spring is re-ran its overwritten. Users who don't report bugs mean some bugs are never found even though users suffer because we rely on the minority who register and post.

How I think we can fix this:

• Write out all the data to a file with a time stamp so each crash is recorded seperately
• The lobby or spring itself should seek out these files and upload them to the spring site automatically if new ones are found.
• The site upon receiving these files should look for an existing mantis ticket with the same stack trace, and attach the new data to the ticket, else start a new bug ticket with attached files.

This will mean error reports will automatically be filed in the system as they happen, and that we service all bugs, not just those that happen on the machines of forum posters and nice people with time to spare.

[el_matarife]

Also noting this should apply to lobby and Lua widget / gadget crashes as well.

I also think the infolog files should be "anonymized" by removing all player chat and ping commands. It should just be Spring data, nothing about the game itself. It should probably also hide data like your Windows or Linux account name, and maybe IP addresses or other personally identifiable data.

Is the infolog embedded in the demo file? If it isn't that seems like it would be very useful.

[zwzsg]

• Write out all the data to a file with a time stamp so each crash is recorded seperately

Last bug I encountered created an infolog of over 1mb each time.

• spring itself should seek out these files and upload them to the spring site automatically if new ones are found.

I hate programs that go for a stroll on the internet without me having asked them specifically to do so.

• This will mean error reports will automatically be filed in the system as they happen, and that we service all bugs, not just those that happen on the machines of forum posters and nice people with time to spare.

I am not sure we need more bug reports. What we need are devs that are nice and with time to spare to nail and fix the already reported bugs.

[el_matarife]

• spring itself should seek out these files and upload them to the spring site automatically if new ones are found.

I hate programs that go for a stroll on the internet without me having asked them specifically to do so.

Excellent point, the lobby should ask you to "opt in" to automatic bug reporting when you start it the first time, then have the setting easily changeable.

[AF]

Last bug I encountered created an infolog of over 1mb each time.

Text files compress very very very very well, go compress infolog.txt in a rar archive and see for yourself

I hate programs that go for a stroll on the internet without me having asked them specifically to do so.

Apple Microsoft and Mozilla have systems like this and what they do is bring up a dialogue telling the user there are reports to send to the developers, and ask if its ok to send them

I am not sure we need more bug reports. What we need are devs that are nice and with time to spare to nail and fix the already reported bugs.

A bug is a bug, and bugs need fixing, if there's a crash bug in the sprign engine we want to know about it. Eitherway your endorsing ignorance of bugs.

[el_matarife]

Last bug I encountered created an infolog of over 1mb each time.

Text files compress very very very very well, go compress infolog.txt in a rar archive and see for yourself

Meanwhile all the lobbies plus Spring itself include 7Zip so there's nothing stopping us from running a quick compression before the file is uploaded.

I am not sure we need more bug reports. What we need are devs that are nice and with time to spare to nail and fix the already reported bugs.

A bug is a bug, and bugs need fixing, if there's a crash bug in the Spring engine we want to know about it. Either way you're endorsing ignorance of bugs.

There's another benefit to automatic crash reporting: developers will get to find out what bugs are causing the most crashes. That should help them prioritize bugs a lot better than the current system of guessing what bugs are critical based on the small sample of people who upload crash logs or vocally complain.

[zwzsg]

A bug is a bug, and bugs need fixing, if there's a crash bug in the sprign engine we want to know about it. Eitherway your endorsing ignorance of bugs.

Lately, there was a crash bug in the engine. Crashed every time, during the loading phase. I naturally reported it to mantis. But if I hadn't insisted on #sy for days and days, the devs would have just shrugged and walked out.

benefit to automatic crash reporting: developers will get to find out what bugs are causing the most crashes.

Good point.

[imbaczek]

zwzsg: your insistance was less of a reason than your willingness to bisect the bug. fix arrived almost as soon as you identified the first broken exe.

[MelTraX]

Funny that this comes up now. Koshi recently added auto-uploading of infolog to SpringLobby and I began writing server-side management code. Yesterday bibim and I created a way for me to automatically translate stacktraces.

I really think this will help a lot since we would see which crash happens most and if crashes are mod/map/ai/os-specific.

My patch to log the source of loaded widgets (mod or user) to infolog.txt was also commited yesterday so that we can tell "Commander Name Tags has an error in BA. It happens 86% of the time."

What I also want to add to that system is the possibility for the user to just type "Bug: Area reclaim doesn't work" in the game. While this isn't very useful for released versions, I think it will be nice for nightlies.

[zwzsg]

zwzsg: your insistance was less of a reason than your willingness to bisect the bug. fix arrived almost as soon as you identified the first broken exe.

Still show that effective bug reporting needs willing humans, and cannot be done with automation.

[imbaczek]

in general case, yes.

BUT! automatic crash reporting will help greatly with the class of bugs that don't require interviewing.

[AF]

Look for the earliest spring revision in the common bug reports and you find the revision the bug was introduced in if it was indeed introduced in a revision.

Error reporting by users takes effort, but clicking a button to send it off to us, is much less hassle than making them sign up to forums and bug trackers and type out explanations and stacktraces.

We have to reduce the friction as much as possible and make it as easy as we can. Why you're resisting something which would benefit you and other content developers by making spring more stable in the longrun is puzzling.

[Auswaschbar]

We don't need hundreds of bugreports, we need good ones. Automatic reporting will not help there.

[imbaczek]

http://kerneloops.org/

the gold standard. i hope you guys have something similar in mind.

[MelTraX]

Yeah, I had something like that in mind.