[Xastir-dev] Blame Canada for xastir segfaults

[Owen DeLong]

Well... I'd say that if we're segfaulting, it's a clear indication that
something is wrong.  I'm not saying the application shouldn't bail out.  I'm
saying that there are actions we might be able to take before we bail out
that could provide the user something more informative and useful than
the words "Segmentation Fault" and a prompt (or worse if they ran it from
an X11 launcher).

I think popping up a window indicating that a fatal error occurred, some
information about where it occurred (we should be able to tell if it 
occurred
within the shapelib or within Xastir, for example), and a pointer to where
they can get more useful debugging information would be a good starting
point.

Providing a convenient way to submit relevant corefiles and traceback
information to the developer web site would be icing on the cake.

And, in answer to your next question, no, I am not going to be able to
write it.

I do feel somewhat guilty sitting on the sidelines and kibbitzing instead
of writing code.  However, as you've seen from the code I have written, I'm
much better at kibbitzing :-)  It also takes less time.  I'm hoping that's
more of a contribution than sitting silently on the sideline.

If you want this on the feature request list, let me know and I'll submit 
it.
I feel at least that responsible. :-)

Owen


--On Tuesday, March 23, 2004 10:45 -0800 "Curt, WE7U" <archer at eskimo.com> 
wrote:

> On Tue, 23 Mar 2004, Curt, WE7U wrote:
>
>> > If we're using a library to parse these files and that library is what
>> > is actually segfaulting, then, I think we have a few different options
>> > (which aren't necessarily mutually exclusive):
>> >
>> > 	1.	File a bug with the library development team.
>
> Separating out the problem map and providing it via a download link
> would be the first step, then file a bug in bugzilla for it
> including the link.
>
>
>> > 	3.	Trap the SIGSEGV from the library and produce a more
>> > 		helpful error message.
>
> I hadn't thought of doing that.  I consider that one more risky as
> we might have other things occur at that point which should cause us
> to go down, and handle them improperly.
>
> --
> Curt, WE7U			    archer at eskimo dot com
> Arlington, WA, USA		http://www.eskimo.com/~archer
> "Lotto:    A tax on people who are bad at math." -- unknown
> "Windows:  Microsoft's tax on computer illiterates." -- WE7U
> "The world DOES revolve around me:  I picked the coordinate system!"



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