Bug 270933 – [PATCH] sys-apps/portage: emerge: "If you need support ..."-message should ask for emerge --info and the build.log

• Product: Portage Development
• Status: RESOLVED FIXED

[Description Sebastian Luther (few) 2009-05-23 12:39:16 UTC]

Current stable portage (=sys-apps/portage-2.1.6.11) prints out the following message if a failure occurs:

 * 
 * ERROR: app-misc/gizmod-3.3 failed.
 * Call stack:
 *               ebuild.sh, line   49:  Called src_compile
 *             environment, line 2139:  Called _eapi2_src_compile
 *               ebuild.sh, line  634:  Called die
 * The specific snippet of code:
 *              emake || die "emake failed"
 *  The die message:
 *   emake failed
 * 
 * If you need support, post the topmost build error, and the call stack if relevant.
 * A complete build log is located at '/var/log/portage/app-misc:gizmod-3.3:20090523-104158.log'.
 * The ebuild environment file is located at '/var/tmp/portage/app-misc/gizmod-3.3/temp/environment'.
 * This ebuild is from a repository named 'sunrise'
 * 

The problem, especially for bug-wrangling is, that in almost all cases emerge --info is needed and in many cases the complete build.log is needed (at least the bug-wrangler might not be able to decide if the maintainer needs it). To increase the bug report quality, I suggest one of the following changes.

1) Change "If you need support, post the topmost build error, and the call stack if relevant." to "If you need support, post emerge --info and the complete build log".

2) Put the output of emerge --info at the beginning of build.log and change "If you need support, post the topmost build error, and the call stack if relevant." to "If you need support, post the complete build log".

Additionally the user's uselfags for the package that failed, should be added to the beginning of the build.log.

[Comment 1 Lars Wendler (Polynomial-C) (RETIRED) 2009-05-23 21:10:54 UTC]

I second this one. From bug-wrangler's point of view this would hopefully help at least with those bug-reporters who actually read the messages portage prints out after an emerge failed...

[Comment 2 Justin Lecher (RETIRED) 2009-05-24 12:52:05 UTC]

As I already mentioned on irc, I think it would be really helpful if at a failed emerge directly one file would be created, which the user just has to attach. This file could contain emerge --info, emerge -vp of the current package, the "top most build" error, it could be too diffifult to grep it out of the build.log, and any other information we like to add. This creation should be triggered by a feature so that we have a maintainer mode for that.

[Comment 3 Sebastian Luther (few) 2009-06-10 08:14:30 UTC]

Created attachment 194090 [details, diff]
Adjust emerge's die message for better bug reports.

[Comment 4 Sebastian Luther (few) 2009-06-18 06:59:44 UTC]

Created attachment 195048 [details, diff]
Adjust emerge's die message for better bug reports. 

Change emerge -pq $CATEGORY/$PF to emerge -pqv =$CATEGORY/$PF. Thanks to Poly-C.

[Comment 5 Zac Medico 2009-10-09 07:02:34 UTC]

Thanks, this is in svn r14521.

[Comment 6 Zac Medico 2009-10-11 00:40:04 UTC]

This is fixed in 2.1.7 and 2.2_rc45.