Automatic Bug Reporting Tool (ABRT) is a tool that helps users to report software issues on Linux. It has been in development since Fedora 10, and it was first introduced to users in Fedora 12. Here are some ABRT usage graphs based on long-term Red Hat Bugzilla user activity. The graphs show the effects of ABRT deployment on Fedora: how much people use ABRT to report software bugs and how developers deal with ABRT bugs.
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All the graphs are based on Bugzilla data as of 2011-08-23, so the last month values are without a week of activity.
The graph shows the number of bugs that are opened by users via ABRT client program on Fedora. Colors represent Fedora releases.
The newly-opened bug count is significantly affected by the quality of ABRT duplicate detection. A new bug is opened when no already-filed bug is found with the same crash. This means that every improvement in the ABRT duplicate detection lowers the number of newly opened bugs, older bugs are reused instead. The peak of 3810 new bugs in 2010-06 was caused by broken duplicate detection algorithm being pushed in ABRT to Fedora 13, which resulted in some bugs being reported many times in duplicate bug reports.
Current problems with the bugs being opened:
Backtrace analysis server solves the first and second problem.
The decline in newly opened bugs is mostly caused by duplicate detection improvements and program improvements, and not by users becoming tired of ABRT.
Number of users reporting ABRT bugs to Bugzilla at least once a month.
Note that the number of bugs is using logarithmic scale. Around 200 ABRT-reported bugs are fixed every week. The NOTABUG (green) spikes are caused by Fedora End of Life script that closes all bugs filed on Fedora version moving out of the maintenance phase. The DUPLICATE (blue) spikes are caused by my duplicate detection scripts finding duplicates in Bugzilla and closing them automatically. NOTABUG and DUPLICATE lines show the price paid for using ABRT: this is the overhead caused by ABRT being not good enough.
The graph shows the speed difference between users filing new bugs and developers triaging/fixing them. Bugs keep adding up until they are closed by the Fedora End of Life script.
faf-stats-* scripts as well, so newer versions will
contain them automatically.