drkonqi and outdated software

[Neal Gompa]

On Wed, Nov 19, 2025 at 3:40 AM Harald Sitter <sitter at kde.org> wrote:
>
> Hey!
>
> I currently have an MR open to disable crash reporting to KDE by
> default and would like your input on the matter.
>
> https://invent.kde.org/plasma/drkonqi/-/merge_requests/364
>
> Essentially we have a problem with users sitting on outdated software
> versions, reporting crashes, and then getting their crash closed
> because their version is no longer getting releases from us. So the
> idea is we have a simple knob to turn on/off reporting to KDE at
> compile time and leave it to distributions to toggle this as
> necessary.
>
> When this is disabled, instead of getting the regular drkonqi UX flow,
> the user will get a less integrated flow where they get a notification
> about the crash that takes them to coredump-gui and then from there
> they can click a button to go to the bug report url you have defined
> in os-release.
>
> How the knob is used is mostly up to you. You could have it enabled
> while you ship supported versions but disable it when their support
> ends. Or just leave it disabled and route all crash reporting through
> your bug tracker first, upstreaming as necessary.
>
> Obviously if you release supported versions regularly through rolling
> updates or backports you can always enable reporting to KDE.
>
> There is also the matter of default-off or on. Any preferences?
>

I think it should remain default-on, with recommendations that
distributions that freeze Plasma versions switch it off. Linux
distributions that do not keep KDE Plasma relatively up to date can
then make the choice to switch it off.

The majority of distributions that ship KDE Plasma do ship the latest
versions as they can, and we should optimize for that.

I would also point out that most of what we're having trouble with is
the pile of Plasma 5 crash reports we still get, rather than Plasma 6
ones. It's not like this patch will impact those still running Plasma
5, so it doesn't help us *that* much. And when the LTS distributions
tick over to Plasma 6, we may find those reports somewhat valuable,
since their usage patterns are different and it may result in
discovering bugs that still exist in the latest versions. It might not
happen too often, but I can foresee it being a thing.

So in the end, I'm not sure it's worth it, but if you want to offer
the control, please leave it on by default.




--
真実はいつも一つ！/ Always, there's only one truth!