Bug reporting: how do you handle it

[dee-u]

If an error occurs in your software how do you guys handle it?

These are my specific queries:
-Do you prompt the user of some options like retry and ignore?
-Do you show the error message or show your custom message and log the error message?
-Do you automatically send an email to prompt you of the error? If there is no internet connection then how will you be notified of the error?

The software will be in a remote place which I cannot personally go so I wish to know what will be the standard practice of such scenario.

TIA

[dglienna]

Have a log file that uploads whenever it's online, or over-writes every 30 days. You need to have some way to figure out what the client did or didn't do to cause the crash.

Windows 7 can record the crash and auto-submit a snap-shot view for support options

[Teranoz]

Define in every function a string with the name of the function
Define in every module a string with the name of the module
If the error occurs write the errordescription with the name of module and function to a log file

In this way you can track the location of the code that might have caused the error the fastest way

[mksimith2]

welcome to dvdcollects.com

[boudino]

-Do you prompt the user of some options like retry and ignore?

If it is possible, thus mean you can be sure what the state of the application is.

-Do you show the error message or show your custom message and log the error message?

I prefere the mix: show custom message, but give option to display the underlying raw error message. Always log.

-Do you automatically send an email to prompt you of the error? If there is no internet connection then how will you be notified of the error?

I would prefere using a general loging framework (Log4NET, MS LAB) which can be configured. You can send the email, log the message to a message queue, write it a log file, or do a combination. I would always log to a file which a user can sent you upon your instruction, but I'd be carefull about sending everything from the application without a user's permissions. So better than automatically sending emails (how would you configure on site SMTP?) is logging, and sending email only as an extra option, which must be invoked by the user.