Report development without the need to restart GnuCash

[Charles Day]

On Tue, May 27, 2008 at 8:49 AM, Derek Atkins <warlord at mit.edu> wrote:

> Quoting Charles Day <cedayiv at gmail.com>:
>
>  Honestly, I'd consider this a "developer issue", not a "user issue".
>>> Those dont really need bug reports, per se.
>>>
>>>
>> I just don't want it to get lost, since it involves crashing.
>>
>
> yes, but it only involves crashing when a developer is working
> on something.  I could just as easily cause a crash by adding
> the following code:
>
>  char* p = 0;
>  printf("crash %c\n", *p);
>
> Should we protect against that, too?


Scheme procedures can be easily wrapped to prevent crashes. C code, not so
much. :(


> Where do you draw the line?
>

Good question. I don't have a general answer. But in this specific
situation, it seems like there are many reports, and so there can be (are?)
many separate options generators. Reporting also seems like an area where a
variety of people contribute, often using Scheme for the very first time.
Here is an opportunity to put a safety net in one spot that would prevent
crashes from being caused by mistakes in any options generator. I assume it
would only be a small change, and there's no performance issue, so it seems
like a good deal. Assuming a backtrace is generated, it makes debugging a
lot easier too.


> Now, if an end user could cause this crash through the UI then
> I'd wholeheartedly agree with you!
>

Yeah, that would obviously be an easy call.

-Charles


> -derek
>
> --
>      Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
>      Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
>      URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
>      warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available
>
>