*sigh*

[andrewducker]

I want to report a bug in K9 email (my Android email client).

To do so I want to attach a log file, so that they can try and work out what's causing it to go ker-thud when I open emails sent using Entourage.

So I install aLogCat, to see if that will give me the logs I need. But it doesn't seem to show a crash - just the messages for displaying the email, followed by the message for starting K9.

Ok - I'll try the other suggestion on their Logging Error page - using the command line and USB debugging.

Which requires the Android SDK (34.8MB). Which I download and install, getting halfway through to discover that...

It requires the Java SDK (80.2MB). Which I download and install. To discover that they've taken the toold I want out of the main install, and I need to download the platform tools.

Which refuse to install. Just saying it couldn't create a folder. A quick google suggests that it doesn't have access to create the folder. So I run it as Administrator. And it works! Huzzah!

So I plug my phone into the PC - first time in over a year, and also first time since I got this PC, so it installs some drivers from scratch, but fails to find some for ADB, which is the command I'm supposed to be using to get the log files. Surely it will "just work"?

Nope, not picking it up. It doesn't seem to think I have any phones attached, despite me turning on USB logging on the phone.

Aha! It seems that the HTC Desire doesn't work with the standard drivers.

Off I go to the HTC website and download HTC Sync (150MB). Which installs some drivers (why they need to be 150MB I have _no_ idea), tells me to temporarily disable my PC's virus software and then installs HTC Sync. I don't actually know if I need to install HTC Sync, but by this point I'm completely bought into the process, have fallen 100% for the sunk cost fallacy*.

Having got that installed, HTC Sync recognises that my phone is plugged in and trying adb it _also_ recognises that there is a phone plugged in. And I can now finally retry the logging, and discover...

Exactly the same, pointless, logging information I got from aLogCat.

So I create the new issue**, and attach the log file anyway (because at least I've shown that the logging doesn't find anything useful.

And now I shall go and do something more productive. Like the washing up, and getting some shirts washed for Monday.

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_costs#Loss_aversion_and_the_sunk_cost_fallacy
**http://code.google.com/p/k9mail/issues/detail?id=3616

Comments

[matgb]

See! See!

Should've got a Nokia ;-)

(help me, I'm becoming an ironic fanboy-if I ever buy an Apple product the world is doomed)

[andrewducker]

I'm not sure how this connects to a third party email client...

[matgb]

Because the built in email client in Symbian is perfect, faultless and everyone should use it, obviously, so if you'd bought a nokia you wouldn't have needed to waste a day ;-)

(sorry, insomnia is killing me currently, it was a completely irrelevent comment worthy of an Apple user)

[andrewducker]

I'll forgive you this once :-)

(When I had a Nokia I paid for Profimail because the built in client annoyed me so much)

[matgb]

Aye, the old Nokia email client was worse than awful, but Mail For Exchange is damn good and does everything I want it to. Mail for Exchange is one of the products that one of the dev wings was hoarding from a different dev wing for ages, so it appeared on my 5800 about half way through me using it even though they'd had it for ages. Such a stupid management structure, it's no wonder they died.

[andrewducker]

Aaah, I'd not actually heard of Mail for Exchange.

I'm still occasionally tempted to pick up ProfiMail for Android. Maybe on my next phone, which will have more storage space.

Horse

[lsanderson.livejournal.com]

Horseshoe, nail

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

(because at least I've shown that the logging doesn't find anything useful.

and THAT is the magic sparkly item that might get you past the next level of support!

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Oh, Entourage. Which uses SMTP commands that were in RFC821, but that were removed in 2821 due to no-one implementing them. Which stops it working (FAVO 'working') with newer releases of Exchange that follow 2821.

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

The best thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from?

[nwhyte]

And now I shall go and do something more productive.

Like strategising about how your next phone probably won't be an Android...

[andrewducker]

I rather suspect it will be. I found a bug in a third-party email client - that's hardly a reason to switch operating systems.

[johncoxon.livejournal.com]

I love how you're completely ignoring the huge bundle of other problems that you uncovered on this journey. Were the issues you found with the myriad of SDKs and the problems with connecting your phone to your computer also just due to that bug in the third-party email client?

[andrewducker]

They were to do with me deciding to install the dev kit so I could see if using the command line would give me additional info for logging the error. Which it didn't - I got just as much info from the app on the marketplace. If I'd trusted that then the whole thing would have been over in three minutes.

If I'd just wanted to sync the phone to my pc I'd have started with the htc software (which worked without a hitch).

My problem came from trying to get the dev kit installed without having the standard software installed. -That- was a right pain. But most people won't be doing that, I'd have thought.

[johncoxon.livejournal.com]

But it should be easy to set up the SDK, surely? On iOS it's easy. You buy a Mac, go onto the App Store, hit the install button next to the Xcode bundle and then wait for it to finish et voila, you're away. It automatically deals with dependencies and the like, as opposed to the steps above which sound totally obtuse... Maybe I'm just being harsh.

[andrewducker]

It would have been great if it had installed the Java SDK and it annoyed me a bit when it didn't. Oracle made me click through a license to download it though, so it's possible they're making it harder than it needs to be.

[jarkman.livejournal.com]

We usually ask people to use SendLog
https://market.android.com/details?id=org.l6n.sendlog&feature=search_result
to send us the LogCat output. But that will be getting you exactly the same content as aLogCat.

[andrewducker]

Which is the same as I got from adb. If I'd realised that I'd have just sent the results I got from aLogCat in the first place...

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

Clearly they don't actually expect geek feedback from people like you. Did you ever considering getting the binary data stream and sending it to them in a you figure it out way?

[andrewducker]

Well, they did give me enough instructions to have done it the easy way. I just happened to not believe the log and tried the hard way...

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

It was easy in terms of following instructions, but not easy in that there were lots of instructions to follow - you couldn't just get debug tool to automate all this.

[andrewducker]

To be fair, their initial instructions were "Install aLogCat from the Market, use it to send a log report." which was pretty simple (and it just emailed me the results).

It was me thinking I'd get better log files from the command line that prompted installing half a gig of software.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

Get a complete new rom - xda developers is the place to go :)

[andrewducker]

How would a new ROM help with a third-party app?

[daveon.livejournal.com]

We're seeing a lot of variation in production Android devices compared to the standard baseline... so I suspect the answer could be use.

[andrewducker]

Seems...unlikely. And even if the problem was with the version of Android on the HTC Desire, getting it fixed so it doesn't happen there sounds like a good plan!