No crash information in crash email (Gmail)

[nicolas-raoul]

Summary:

Since a rather long time, ACRA seems to not attach logs to the crash report email.
For instance, I just got a crash and after the ACRA screen, Gmail opens on this screen:

As you can see, the email is empty, so there is no point sending it.

Fortunately I had logcat running this time, here it is, hopefully it can explain why the crash info is not included in the email:
empty_acra.txt

[vvijayalakshmi21]

HI, I am an Outreachy applicant and would like to contribute,
Kindly assign this issue to me
Also, I know just the basics of Android dev. It would be really helpful if you could help me get started with setting up the project.

[nicolas-raoul]

@vvijayalakshmi21 It is yours :-)

Here is how I would do:

1. Run the app in debug mode, make sure breakpoints work.
2. Try and reproduce the exception found in the empty_acra.txt file above.
3. Debug step-by-step what happens after the exception.

Thanks!

[sivaraam]

FWIW, I recently tried to send the crash email from ACRA using K-9 mail and I was able to see the crash information in the mail body. I've even sent it to the crash Google group where people with access to it can find it for reference.

[sivaraam]

To clarify my previous comment, I'm just saying crash reporting works fine with K-9 mail. So, there's a chance this might be a Gmail specific thing that needs to be handled.

[vvijayalakshmi21]

Thank you so much for the direction sir.
Kindly help me get started. How do I set up the project in my local machine? (Windows 10 Home)
Is there a way to replicate the issue in the live website?

[nicolas-raoul]

@sivaraam Interesting! So it seems to be specific to the crash found in the empty_acra.txt above. I modify the instructions.

[nicolas-raoul]

@vvijayalakshmi21 See https://github.com/commons-app/documentation/blob/master/android/Volunteers-welcome!.md

[vvijayalakshmi21]

Hi Nicolas, I have cloned the repo as mentioned in the guidelines. On reading about the exception from the above log file, it seems like it is more likely to occur in the cases when 1) Order of read and write in Parcelable is different, 2) the CREATOR is not mentioned as static in proguard. I checked the source code and upon checking I see that in our code both of them are rightly done.
I also read in one of the posts that such issue could happen when the app is kept open for a long time in the background and when a memory-consuming app is opened then this app will be cleared of the memory which leads to a crash when accessed again. Would it be possible to let me know how you reproduced this issue?
Do you think I can just change the order in one of the Parcelable codes to reproduce the crash and see what happens? Will this be a good start to approach? Kindly let me know your thoughts about this.

[sivaraam]

So it seems to be specific to the crash found in the empty_acra.txt above.

I just checked now and came to know that this really isn't specific to the crash observed by @nicolas-raoul. In my observation, for a crash that's different from the one observed by Nicolas:

• When I choose K-9 mail to send the mail I see the To, Subject and Body of the e-mail getting filled appropriately.
• When I choose Gmail to send the mail I only the To field gets filled. The Subject and Body are empty as initially observed by Nicolas

So, I really think the actual problem is the interaction with Gmail.

@vvijayalakshmi21 Can you verify this?

[vvijayalakshmi21]

@sivaraam Just want to clear my understanding on this issue. The problem is that we are not seeing the attachment file (in the case of a crash in the app) in the composed mail when we use Gmail whereas other mail providers like K-9 works just fine. So I have to check if this could be replicated for any crash. Is that right? Kindly confirm

[sivaraam]

@vvijayalakshmi21 I'm not sure about whether an attachment is added when you report crash but when I report a crash (read 'send a crash report email') using K-9 mail I see the To, Subject and Body fields of the e-mail filled correctly. Here's a screenshot of K-9 mail:

When I do the same reporting with Gmail only the To field gets filled. The Subject and Body are empty:

I know crash reporting works fine with K-9 mail but haven't tested other e-mail clients. Hope this helps. Let me know if need any other clarifications. 🙂

[vvijayalakshmi21]

Thanks so much for this. I read a couple of S.Overflow posts related to this:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/59314608/android-studio-mailto-intent-doesnt-show-subject-and-mail-body
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/59237274/email-intent-subject-is-ignored-in-gmail-but-works-with-other-mail-clients

I have been trying to replicate the issue and try out the above solutions using my emulator on Android studio but I have been having issues. Could you please help me out?

[sivaraam]

I have been trying to replicate the issue and try out the above solutions using my emulator on Android studio but I have been having issues. Could you please help me out?

Sure. Share the details about the issues you are facing. 🙂