Sender:	vheyndri AT rug DOT ac DOT be
Message-Id:	<3520DBE2.192F@rug.ac.be>
Date:	Tue, 31 Mar 1998 14:04:50 +0200
From:	Vik Heyndrickx <Vik DOT Heyndrickx AT rug DOT ac DOT be>
Mime-Version:	1.0
To:	Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
Cc:	George Foot <george DOT foot AT merton DOT oxford DOT ac DOT uk>, djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com
Subject:	Re: Auto-symified traceback
References:	<Pine DOT SUN DOT 3 DOT 91 DOT 980331105809 DOT 23311B-100000 AT is>

Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> You mean, create a `core' file?  I don't know.  Opinions, anyone?

How do users get this traceback as input to symify? The only method that
I know of is "redir"-ing the traceback into a file (or copy it by hand
;-). Except in an exceptional occasion, the traceback alone doesn't tell
the user or author much what went wrong. So IMO that extra redir-step
isn't really needed and I think it would be acceptable to write the
traceback directly to a file (If that file couldn't be created from some
reason, then write to stderr instead). I wouldn't duplicate that
traceback on the screen, just a "proper" abort message and info to the
user where the, ahum ahum, "core" image was written to.

A second reason for having such behaviour is that some programs have
non-reproducable bugs. Sometimes, if you are lucky, the traceback will
even point you to actually reason of the crash. At least you wouldn't
have to copy the traceback by hand from the screen.

...my opinion

-- 
 \ Vik /-_-_-_-_-_-_/   
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