Bug#839604: /usr/bin/g-ir-scanner: error message when introspection fails could be clearer

[Paul Gevers]

Package: gobject-introspection
Version: 1.49.1-2
Severity: wishlist
File: /usr/bin/g-ir-scanner

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

While debugging bug 839397¹ I was put of for a long time by the slighly cryptic
error message:

Command '['./liferea', '--introspect-dump=/tmp/tmp-introspectrfirzef6/functions.txt,/tmp/tmp-introspectrfirzef6/dump.xml']' returned non-zero exit status -11

It took me until I looked at the python code of g-ir-scanner to see that what
this tells me is that g-ir-scanner actually tried to run a command line
operation (that I could manually try if I knew what the content of
/tmp/tmp-introspect*/functions.txt was) which fails with exit status -11. Only
after manual running the command I know that -11 means segfault (at least in
this case).

Could the error message be improved for non-python gurus? Also the "exit status
- -11" isn't telling me as much as "segfault".

Feel free to close as wontfix, I just needed to share my debugging frustration
in a constructive manner.

¹ https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=839397

- -- System Information:
Debian Release: stretch/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 4.6.0-1-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

Versions of packages gobject-introspection depends on:
ii  build-essential        12.2
ii  libc6                  2.23-5
ii  libffi6                3.2.1-4
ii  libgirepository-1.0-1  1.49.1-2
ii  libglib2.0-0           2.49.6-1
ii  python3-mako           1.0.4+ds1-1
pn  python3:any            <none>

gobject-introspection recommends no packages.

gobject-introspection suggests no packages.

- -- no debconf information

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1

iQEcBAEBCAAGBQJX8V0IAAoJEJxcmesFvXUKrtMH/3UOcNXLIWn3xLwPsAxTLaD7
0nFEnddiPOx9z5sNp++YXzjK3dRmuOtXJX7z8o2JXet/j3b++U1atiPyaOBFsQ/Y
XfnkW+gfrIgyQiTf5pvHvWlgxsJPOKstru6BqntIYlWSUlhjTy6WHtbYTN239c0v
CxwgnRwadb5HmMNkGH/PxOIP5HY5KZTKrZ80mRNgp3VOH+t/rWhTP4JXHFvRWNZf
2Eli0QmDZJSD7TbHTicGOpQ3hcqu9unJDlfiVlK9z4upndQlmiwgnO943mICuSOT
KgV7/JVpJKgrRn19uQ8wK05rGFo4tyoiOj5yelufpy6npDqnnIAMqER+ae/OK00=
=sUeG
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----