HowToReportBugs

• Principles
• Preliminaries
• Reporting a New Bug
• Tutorials

extJWNL project uses Trac to keep track :) of bugs. In Trac terminology bug reports are called tickets. In the Wiki navigation bar above there links to View Tickets and to create a New Ticket.

Principles

In creating tickets, follow these principles (adopted from Mozilla Developer Center)

• Be precise
• Be clear - explain it so others can reproduce the bug
• One bug per report
• No bug is too trivial to report - small bugs may hide big bugs
• Clearly separate fact from speculation

Preliminaries

1. Reproduce your bug using a recent build or better the latest source code, to see whether it has already been fixed.
2. View Tickets to see whether your bug has already been reported (tutorial).

Reporting a New Bug

If you have reproduced the bug in a recent build and no-one else appears to have reported it, then:

1. Choose New Ticket
2. Fill out the form. Here is some help understanding it:

Summary: How would you describe the bug, in approximately 60 or fewer characters?

A good summary should quickly and uniquely identify a bug report. It should explain the problem, not your suggested solution.

• Good: "Cancelling a File Copy dialog crashes File Manager"
• Bad: "Software crashes"
• Bad: "Browser should work with my web site"

Description: The details of your problem report, including

• more detailed restatement of the summary
• Steps to Reproduce: Minimized, easy-to-follow steps that will trigger the bug. Include any special setup steps.
  • Configuration. Specify whether you use default configuration or otherwise attach your configuration, include your WordNet configuration.
  • Input. Describe your input, or if possible, attach a minimal input files which reproduce the bug.
• Actual Results: What extJWNL did after performing the above steps.
  • did it run and gives wrong results?
  • did it crash?
• Expected Results: What the application should have done, were the bug not present.
• Build Date & Platform: Date and platform of the build in which you first encountered the bug.
• Additional Information: Any other useful information.

For crashing bugs attach a log file. It is useful to set logging level to debug before reproducing. This will create a log file with a maximum amount of details.

Add an attachment: You can attach relevant files to a bug report. Debugging information more than 20 lines long should be supplied this way. Also, if you have an input files that demonstrates the bug, you should attach that. You can only attach one file during initial submission so if your demonstration needs more, revisit the newly filed bug to do this part.

Finish: Press "Preview", check your report for errors and omissions, then press "Create ticket".

Tutorials

Submitting a quality bug report greatly increases chances of it being fixed. Check these links on how to write good bug reports:

• How to Report Bugs Effectively
• Bug Life Cycle and Reporting Guidelines
• Bug reporting guidelines
• Bug Reporting Best Practices

Check Trac Ticket System for more details about tickets.