How to report bugs

Please follow these steps when reporting bugs, it makes it much easier to fix them:

  1. Always use the latest version, chances are the bug was already fixed.
  2. First of all, see if the bug was already reported (or even fixed!): search the bugs and  mailing lists. If the bug is already known and you have additional useful information about it, please add it to the existing bug (on the other hand, simply stating that you too want this bug fixed is not necessary).
  3. Please fill in the reporter field. If you register and log in, it is set to your username automatically. You don't have to register in order to report a bug, but if you don't, please enter your email address here, instead of leaving it as anonymous. That's useful if we need to contact you later and you also get notifications about any changes to the ticket. You don't have to worry about spammers getting hold of the address, your full email address is only shown to logged in users, harvesters won't see it.
  4. Choose short, but meaningful and descriptive summary for the ticket. This makes it easy to understand what the bug is about at first glance.
  5. Describe the bug in great detail, don't assume I know anything about what you do. If you can reliably reproduce the bug (in vast majority of cases, you can), please describe what exactly to do to make it happen. Don't worry about being too verbose, that never hurts. If the bug involves some specific catalog file or sources files, please attach the necessary files.
  6. If it isn't obvious, describe what the desired behavior is and how it differs from the current, incorrect one.
  7. Make sure other fields are set correctly:
    • set version to your version
    • set platform to the platform you use Poedit on; if you are 100% sure the bug is not platform-specific, set it to any
    • set severity to defect for bugs or enhancements for new features you'd like to have
    • don't worry about other fields, we'll set them to appropriate fields ourselves; in particular, please do not set the "priority" field
  8. If you are a programmer yourself, then the best you can do is to attach a patch that fixes the bug.
  9. Use English in emails, screenshots, error logs.

Thanks in advance!

 How to Report Bugs Effectively by Simon Tatham