drkonqi and outdated software

[A. Wilcox]

On Nov 19, 2025, at 02:39, 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 Essentially we have a problem with users sitting on outdated software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?
> 
> HS

Hi there Harald,

My personal preference would be to have support for a custom helper
that can be called by DrKonqi.  This should take a normal DrKonqi
report as input via stdin, and return 0 on success and non-zero on
failure so DrKonqi can say “Thanks, your report is submitted!” or
“Sorry, there was an issue submitting your report.  It’s at
[/tmp/drkonqi-report or such] if you want to submit it yourself."

Then the custom helper can report to the distributor, instead of
just dropping the user in a bug report URL that they may not
understand, requiring them to sign up (which may be too much effort
for them), and cause even more frustration.  Or, by default, the
‘custom' helper can just xdg-open the bug report URL (or such).

I also want to ask here for total clarity: does that mean there
will never be a Plasma LTS release again?  I know that the outcome
at Graz was that Plasma LTS was being suspended, but I thought it
was while KDE 6 was being evolved, and it had a chance of coming
back once things settled down.  My bad if not.

Thanks for reading and considering our viewpoints.

Best,
-Anna

--
Anna Wilcox (she/her)
Technical Lead, Adélie Linux