Reporting Bugs

Following are guidlines for a good bug report. They help to convey your experience to the developers efficiently. A good bug report saves time, because we don't have to ask for missing information and we can easily reproduce what's going on. Therefore we can better and faster provide a fix.
Please take the time to write a good bug report. In the end, everybody will be happier :) you because you'll get the fix sooner and us because we don't have to guess wildly what the report means and why it happens.

Summary of rules for a good bug report:

• check if there is already a bug report before opening a new one
• don't place multiple reports in a single bug. Use a separate report for each bug.
• give the version of TeXstudio
• give the version of your operating system
• Provide example/steps to reproduce
• be prepared to answer additional questions we might have. (We have to close quite a few orphaned reports, because they are incomplete and we don't get feedback on questions).
• when providing screenshots, describe or mark what is importatnt/buggy. Especially if the the look deviates distinctly from default, the major issue is easy to miss.

Version of TeXstudio

Some bugs may already be resolved meanwhile. To determine whether the bug is a new one or an known one, the version in the about dialog (revision in brackets) is helpful.

Operating System

Some bugs are only present on some operating systems, hence it is important to know on which one to look.

Provide Example/Steps to Reproduce

Short descriptions of faulty behaviour is often ambigious. Please be as precise as possible.

1. What do you do?

If the case is more complex, do a step by step description of your actions. Additionally, please attach a minimal example .tex file if applicable.

2. What is the result?

Screenshots do significantly help to demonstrate what you are talking about, if possible add one. Nevertheless mark or describe clearly what is faulty. Especially with non-latin fonts, errors are not easily discernable for the developers.

In case of a crash, please attach the backtrace which can be found in the tmp-directory. The backtrace file is called texstudio_backtrace*.txt.

3. What would you have expected instead?

Sometimes a faulty behavior is not obvious or the program just works differently from the users expectations. Therefore you should specify what you think should happen.

This is a good example:

OS X Yosemite 10.10.1
TeXstudio 2.8.8

The width of tabs for the "Messages / Log Files" does not adapt to the font size.

How to reproduce:
Go to Preferences -> Font size and set the font size 10 or more
Result: The font in the tabs is increased, but the tab width is not. Thus the text is clipped.
Expected: Tabs should scale with the font size.

[screenshot]

[Leonard König]

Very nice guide! Reads fast, is not too long to read it completely and makes clear statements what's needed for a good report.