Posts from June 2007.

RBScoutSubmit 1.0 Released

A couple of weeks ago there was a discussion on the REALbasic NUG regarding what bug tracking systems everyone uses, and of course I chimed in with FogBugz! But I also mentioned that I could make my code for submitting crashes to FogBugz available.

I had a few responses looking for the code, so I cleaned it up a little to remove some project specific stuff that was in the modules, created a simple little example program, and then sent the classes on there merry little way to those who responded.

Even though these classes are pretty very rough, I decided to stick them up on this interweb thingy, you can find them in the Free Stuff section of my company website rbscoutsubmit Google Code project, along with the UNIX Crypt module I put up there some time ago.

Here’s a quick run down of how it looks when you run the example application…

RBScoutSubmitExample.jpg
When you click the “Go BANG!!!” button in the example app an OutOfBounds exception will be raised (I’m referencing an element of an array that isn’t initialised).

RBScoutSubmitAppError.jpg
An “Application Error” window will be shown that says very sorry for going bang, and asks that the user submit the error report with details of what they were doing at the time.

RBScoutSubmitErrReport.jpg
If the user wants to see what the error report contains before sending it, they can. This is always a good idea, gives the user a little more confidence that you haven’t just scanned their hard disk and are about to send out all their passwords!
This report format can be changed by you (the REALbasic developer) to whatever format you like, and can include extra info if you like (e.g. in the Windows version I add info as to whether the user is an admin, and memory available, as these tend to be important).

RBScoutSubmitSending.jpg
When the user hits the Send button, RBScoutSubmit uses your FogBugz installations’ scoutSubmit functionality to submit details of the crash. If you’ve set some pithy response on a case that already matches the Title, Project and Area submitted, the user will get that back (usually, “we’ve already fixed this, please update your version”), or some default “Thanks for submitting the report” message you supply in the application.

RBScoutSubmitInFogBugz.jpg
In FogBugz a case will be created with the Project, Area and Title you baked into your application, and if the user added some comments and/or their email address, they’ll be available too.

RBScoutSubmitInFogBugz2.jpg
You can see in this last screen shot that my example message made it intact.

If you want to give the classes a try, please do, the license is a standard MIT open source license, so you can do pretty much what you like with them except claim the code is yours (not that you’d want to)!

Any suggestions on how to improve the classes, or if you want to submit code changes back, please drop me an email, there’s contact details in the README.txt.