[Lilug-dev-sig] Best way to troubleshoot

[Rob Wilkens]

On Thu, Dec 24, 2009 at 12:13 PM, Chris Knadle <Chris.Knadle at coredump.us> wrote:
> I have a few initial suggestions.
>
> -  Some applications have an optional "debug" packaged version of the
> application that have debugging symbols compiled in to help debug
> problems.  Evolution is one of those -- so try installing the
> "evolution-dbg" package to see if that gives you a more descriptive
> error.  This will also every much help you if you try using gdb, which
> also needs these debugging symbols.
>
> -  Look at the Ubuntu/Debian bug reports to see if it's a known issue.
> It speeds the work up when you find out what others have found out
> about the problem already.
>
> -  If the bug is new, write a bug report.  This lets you get in
> contact with the Ubuntu/Debian developer of the package and also helps
> others that are also having the problem.  Being descriptive, curteous,
> and avoiding speculation seems to help get to a resolution of the
> issue the quickest.
>
>
> Other than that I'd say continue on the route you're already taking:
>   - try using gdb (or equivalent)
>   - install source via "sudo apt-get source evolution"
>   - install source dependencies via "apt-get build-dep evolution"
>   - when you're ready to try evolution after you've modified the
>     source, build a package you can install via "debuild -us -uc"
>     within source directory (it's part of the "devscripts" package)
>   - As you make changes to the source, you might want to consider
>     using source control (git, mecurial, etc)
>
> And of course, good luck!
>
>   -- Chris

That's all excellent and helpful information..  I got started, but
need to leave i a few minutes.. I'm confident i'll get this working.

I am guessing this happenned perhaps because when i was running
evolution, a message to install updates popped up, and something about
installing updates possibly killed the evolution process while it was
writing a data file, resulting in the state it is in now..  Still, i'd
like to find out what went wrong and if it can be prevented.

Rob