[Chandler-dev] Proposal for a startup-options dialog

[Andi Vajda]

+1

I recently had a similar debate with Heikki about this. While having a goal of 
no repository failures or chandler bugs in general is a laudable one, 
preventing one from recovering from a failure when it happens is shooting 
oneself in the foot.

Look at the recent blog post by Tim Bray on iCal:
http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2006/05/11/iCal-still-sucks

I sure don't want anyone to complain that Chandler sucks hugely because we 
removed all the recovery facilities just because "they should never be 
needed".

Andi..

On Mon, 15 May 2006, Bryan Stearns wrote:

> Recent Chandler issues have produced situations where a user has needed to 
> "interact directly" with his/her repository:
> - The repository is damaged and can't be opened
> - The repository isn't damaged, but the last Chandler run died and left it 
> with broken UI structures, such that Chandler gets confused on startup and 
> crashes. (I think the problem Sheila just showed me falls into this case, 
> which is why I'm sending this now.)
> - A corrupt repository needs to be sent to us.
> - Additionally, it's sometimes useful to tell Chandler to --create a new 
> repository, but the user doesn't normally start Chandler from the command 
> line -- figuring out how to do this is an extra hurdle for the user to solve 
> in a situation where we've let him/her down.
>
> I propose we add a mechanism to put up a dialog on startup if the user is 
> holding down a metakey (to be named later; we can figure one out that works 
> on all platforms and doesn't interfere with basic application launching); 
> this dialog would offer this radio-group of choices;
> - Continue startup normally (the default, in case the metakey's inadvertently 
> down)
> - Keep my data, but reset the UI information in my repository
> - Discard my repository completely and start over
>
> and optionally (a separate checkbox with two editfields)
> - Send my repository to OSAF; here's my email address so OSAF can ask me 
> followup questions: [       ] and the number of the bug I filed about this: [ 
> ].
>
> I proposed something like this a long time ago, and it generally got boo'd 
> down, I think because "we should just fix the bugs that leave the repository 
> in a bad state". I agree that we need to fix bugs like this, but for a while 
> yet we'll need a mechanism to help users affected by these problems, other 
> than "Just go find your profile directory and delete it. Oh, you don't know 
> what that is? Just start Chandler with the --create option. Oh, you've never 
> used a command line?"...)
>
> ...Bryan
>
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