ReportingBugs

Where to report bugs

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

Note, however, that simple typos and story/flavor text errors should be reported on the SpellingMistakes wiki page.

Note also, that bugs of user made content should be reported on the forum in the appropriate thread of the add-on in question. Usually those threads are in either the Scenario & Campaign Development, Faction & Era Contributions or Multiplayer Development sub forum.

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.

How to be ignored

Your bug report is more likely to be tagged Invalid and ignored if you:

File it as anonymous so we can't ask you followup questions
Provide only the vaguest description of the problem
Don't include a savefile and a recipe for reproducing it from the savefile
Post feature requests without prior discussion at the forum or IRC

If you crave being ignored, do these things. If you want your bug addressed quickly and effectively, don't do any of them.

Guidelines for suggesting features

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.
If it hasn't been implemented, please check that it hasn't been already submitted, by searching http://bugs.wesnoth.org.
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".
If you get positiv results on the forum (preferably from at least one developer) 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.
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.
Be as specific as possible on how the feature should work so that anyone trying to implement it knows exactly what to do.

Guidelines for reporting bugs

When reporting simple spelling mistakes use the SpellingMistakes page.

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).
If it hasn't been fixed yet, please check that the bug hasn't already been reported, by http://bugs.wesnoth.org.
If your bug hasn't been reported, please go ahead and report it.
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.

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.