[saagarjha]

> It’s okay to log bugs that are missing information; developers can ask for specifics of what they need. In general, for AppKit related bugs, I would find that a “sysdiagnose” rarely would provide any useful information. I would hate it when people (usually QA, and not the engineers who worked on the code) would ask me for a sysdiagnose, when I know it wouldn’t help them figure anything out.

Yeah, except Bug Reporter nags you multiple times for a sysdiagnose if you don't attach one (they have been slowing adding these, I've noticed), and if you ignore these screening is going to send it back to you a week later, without reading the bug, asking for you add one. Sometimes if you do have the sysdiagnose they'll ask for something equally stupid (system profile, usually).

[redwoodmonkey]

The sysdiagnose does contain useful information that is useful for certain bugs. If an app crashes, then the crash report is essential. The log file is also (sometimes) useful. It is easier to ask for a sysdiagnose that gathers the kitchen sink instead of the developer just providing the piece needed (ie: the leaky faucet). -corbin

[saagarjha]

Yeah, I know that, but the screeners will often ask for a sysdiagnose in cases where it's clearly not useful (for example, visual bugs that exist on an out-of-box installation). So it's pretty clear they're either not reading the bug, or going through some sort of checklist that one of the engineers gave them (don't bother me with a bug without a sysdiagnose!)

[redwoodmonkey]

Yeah, it is stupid. I used to see this all the time.

[rogual]

The other day I reported a bug in Safari's regex engine and they asked for a sysdiagnose.

I just don't have the energy to perform pointless tasks, so their browser can stay broken.

(In case Apple is reading: /.*?x/u.exec('ふx') should match but doesn't.)

[viraptor]

If it can be collected, I guess it's a good process for them. It may not be super user-friendly, but if enough bugs require sysdiagnose for solving, then it's an improvement to not even bother devs until it's provided.

It may not be needed then, but it still saves time.

[vsl]

As the article says, it’s almost always useless.

Even if it weren’t, at least some amount of thinking should be involved in requesting it, and e.g. don’t do it on feature requests or API defect problems. But they do, oh they do.

It should also be noted that it doesn’t save time: it off-loads some time wastage to an external developer who is filling the bug. And who has to pointlessly collect it (it takes several minutes and knocks your system off), then upload 200-400MB file to a notoriously crappy form that it will time out or error out, or sometimes say the upload was successful only to get a bitchy QA reply a week later to upload sysdiagnose.

A few years back, I had a sysdiagnose so huge that Radar just wouldn’t take it. I spent an hour trying to upload the damn thing and eventually uploaded it elsewhere and posted an URL.

To this day, that sysdiagnose file was not downloaded a single time.

[saagarjha]

FWIW, Bug Reporter has not yet required sysdiagnoses for feature requests. And for large sysdiagnoses, you can ask for an alternative method to upload them; at some point I was given credentials for a FTP server I could upload it to.