ReportingBugs

From The Battle for Wesnoth Wiki
Revision as of 04:06, 19 January 2008 by Anakayub (talk | contribs) (Guidelines for suggesting features)

Where to report bugs

The prefered way to report bugs is through our bug tracking system on Gna, but you can also post your problem to the forums.

Needed information

  • What version of the game are you running?
  • Have you built (from sources) the game by yourself? gcc/g++ version? SDL library versions?
  • What operating system are you using? What version/release of that operating system?
  • Can you reproduce the problem? If you can please provide steps to do it.

On special request another note: Use common sense! If you know the information can't be relevant to your report simply omit it. Nevertheless too much information usually doesn't hurt.

Guidelines for suggesting features

  1. First, please make sure the feature you are suggesting does not already exist (particularly in the latest development version of the game, consult the changelog) by double-checking the help files and options to make sure you aren't missing something.
  2. If it hasn't been implemented, please check that it hasn't been already submitted, by searching http://bugs.wesnoth.org.
  3. If your feature request hasn't been submitted, start a topic about your feature at the Forums after reading "Giving your idea the best chance of being accepted" as well as "the Frequently Proposed Ideas".
  4. If you get positiv results on the forum you can go ahead and submit your feature request using the bug request form. Select "Feature Request" for the Category and usually "1 - Wish" as the Severity.
  5. Please post only one feature per feature request. If you have multiple feature ideas that are related, you can cross reference them easily with "bug #123". See the Markup Reminder for more details.

Guidelines for reporting bugs

When reporting simple spelling mistakes use the SpellingMistakes page.

  1. First, please make sure the bug you are reporting has not already been fixed (consult http://changelog.wesnoth.org/ to see the history of changes to the game).
  2. If it hasn't been fixed yet, please check that the bug hasn't already been reported, by http://bugs.wesnoth.org.
  3. If your bug hasn't been fixed, please go ahead and report it.
  4. Please post only one bug per bug report. If you have multiple bugs that are related, you can cross reference them easily with "bug #123". See the Markup Reminder for more details.

Keep bug reports to the point, and make sure your bug is easily reproducible given the information you provide. Clearly written, reproducible single bug reports will get attention before those reports that mix several different bugs into one report, or that are incomprehensible.

If there is already an existing bug report, do not hesitate to add a comment with your details - this way we know when some bug is getting "popular".

Please login to Gna! before reporting bugs

An account at Gna! is free and takes very little time to set up. You can submit anonymous bug reports, but then you will have to keep an eye on the bug report in case developers ask for clarification, which will delay your bug being fixed. If you login, you will receive notifications of any changes to your bug reports, which speeds things up considerably.

In-play problems

If it is in-play problem that you can reproduce, save the game and send the savegame to us with details how to reproduce the problem from the savegame.

Problems with scenarios

If it is a problem with a contributed scenario (like the ones on the Campaign Server), please report the problem to the maintainer of the scenario, not as a bug in Wesnoth itself. Bugs in the MainlineScenarios should be reported in the bug tracker.

Multiplayer out-of-sync errors

  • We need wesnoth stdout/stderr output from person who got the error (if you started wesnoth in terminal stdout/stderr is in that terminal).
  • We need savegame from person who got the error.
  • Savegame from some other player if possible.
  • The person who got the error should report the bug, other players can then add their savegames to that bug.

Segfault

  • In Unix follow the instructions at DebuggingWesnoth to generate information to send to a developer.
  • In NT based OS's (including Win2k, XP) you enable/configure core dumps by running 'drwtsn32', the location of the dumps can be changed there.
  • In Mac OS X, you can enable Crash Reporter -- the output is a backtrace. Run Applications -> Utilities -> Console to see log output. See http://www.mozilla.org/mailnews/osxinfo.html for information on how to enable Crash Reporter.

Sending savegames, screenshots, coredumps, etc

  • Please compress the files (bzip2, gzip, zip).
  • You can attach files if you submit your bug through Gna!, else
  • Put them on some web or ftp server where we can download them.
  • You can attach files to forum posts.

Bug protocol

  • When adding a new bug, please choose either "Bug" or "Feature Request" as its Category; it may not be noticed if you leave the Category as "None".
  • We use the Status values "None" (awaiting action), "Fixed", "Won't Fix", "Invalid" (not a bug), "Works For Me" (unreproducible), or "Need Info".
  • A bug which is fixed is marked "Fixed" by a developer, probably the one committing the fix or reviewing it.
  • A bug present in a release is marked "Closed" only upon a new release containing the fix.
  • Any bug present only in WesnothSVN is marked "Closed" when it is fixed.

Who To Bug

This list is intended to give guidance on who developers doing bug triage should assign bugs to. Wesnoth developers who have agreed to take responsibility for particular subsystems, campaigns, or topic areas are listed here.

alink
Maintainer of the mouse interface, also like to fix inconsistencies in the UI or add small usability feature.
allefant
Maintainer of campaigns-client.py. Python expert.
baufo
Maintainer of Descent Into Darkness campaign.
boucman
Animation engine guru, can also help with low-level networking and generic map drawing issues. You can also bug him for unassigned patches.
esr
Maintainer of wmllint, wmlscope. Backup autotools expert, after isaac. Python expert. General toolsmith; if you need a development or auditing tool for WML, talk to him. Co-maintainer of the Northern Rebirth campaign. Resident prose fixer and English-usage pedant, refer spelling errors and storyline copy-edit problems to him.
ivanovic
The master of releases. Also the master of translations, gettext-related infrastructure and maintainer of Two Brothers.
mythological
Maintainer of the Eastern Invasion and The Rise of Wesnoth campaigns.
sapient
Maintainer of the WML interpreter engine and the UI widget set.
soliton
Maintainer of the multiplayer server.
taurus
Maintainer of Northern Rebirth campaign.
zookeeper
General-purpose WML expert. Maintainer of unit animations and sound effects.