Ximian Bug Tracking System

Bug Writing HOWTO

(Maintained by Luis Villa)

Why You Should Read This

The Ximian bug tracking system (Bugzilla) allows any interested individuals on the Internet to directly report and track bugs in Ximian's Gnome distribution and open-source projects.

Like you, we want your bug reports to result in bug fixes; the more effectively a bug is reported, the more likely that a developer will actually fix it.

By following these guidelines, you can help ensure that your bugs stay at the top of the developers' heap, and get fixed. The Bugzilla Helper is the preferred method of submitting a bug - it incorporates parts of these guidelines.

How to Enter your Useful Bug Report into Bugzilla:

1. Are you sure you don't want to use the Bugzilla Helper? It is the easy way of doing this :)
2. Are you in the right place? Many of the products in Ximian Gnome are pieces of software from the Gnome Project that Ximian, Inc. repackages and distributes, and bugs that are against that software generally belongs in Gnome's Bugzilla and not here.
3. Before you enter your bug, you need to make sure it has not been previously reported. Mozilla.org has a great tutorial on using the Bug Query interface to do this at http://www.mozilla.org/quality/help/beginning-duplicate-finding.html that is quite applicable to our bugzilla.
   After searching, if you've discovered a new bug, report it in Bugzilla. Either use the Bugzilla Helper (recommended) or follow the instructions below:
4. OK, then. From the Bugzilla main page (http://bugzilla.ximian.com), choose "Enter a new bug".
5. Select the product that you've found a bug in. If you don't see the program that you are using here, but you got that product as part of Ximian Gnome, then you'll probably find it under the "Ximian Gnome" product. Most of the rest of the products are self-explanatory.
6. If you haven't logged into Bugzilla already, you'll need to enter your email address, password, and press the "Login" button. (If you don't yet have a password, leave the password text box empty, and press the "email me a password" button instead. You'll receive an email message with your password shortly.)

Now, fill out the form. Here's what each part of the form means:

Product: In which product did you find the bug?
You just filled this out on the last page.

Version: In which product version did you find the bug?
Many of our products do not yet use this field. If there are options, please select the appropriate one. Otherwise, please make sure to enter the version of the product in the comments of the bug.

Component: In which component does the bug exist?
This should (in most cases) be self-explanatory. If you are unsure, pick one that seems as close as possible to the one that you feel would be correct.

OS: On which Operating System (OS) did you find this bug?
The Ximian Bugzilla uses this field for both OS (HPUX, Solaris, and GNU/Linux (all/other)) and the OS Details field for distribution. If you know what distribution you are using, please mark the appropriate one. If you don't, select GNU/Linux (other). If you know that the bug is present on more than one distribution, select GNU/Linux (all) and make sure to specify in the comments or OS Details field what distributions you've tested it on.

Priority: How important is the bug?
The full list of priorities is here, but in a nutshell: if it crashes the application, it should be Blocker, and if it is a new feature request, it should be Wishlist. Everything else will fall in somewhere in between.

Assigned To: Which developer should be responsible for fixing this bug?
Bugzilla will automatically assign the bug to a default developer upon submitting a bug report; the text box exists to allow you to manually assign it to a different developer. (To see the list of default developers for each component, click on the Component link.)

Cc: Who else should receive e-mail updates on changes to this bug?
List the full e-mail addresses of other individuals who should receive an e-mail update upon every change to the bug report. You can enter as many e-mail addresses as you'd like; e-mail addresses must be separated by commas, with no spaces between the addresses.

You would not normally change either this or assigned to: from their default values.

URL: Is there a URL with more data about the bug?
This can be useful for posting logs, screenshots, cores, and other things that might be useful to someone trying to debug the problem, but which might not be appropriate to attach to the bug because of number or size.

Summary: How would you describe the bug, in approximately 60 or fewer characters?
A good summary should quickly and uniquely identify a bug report. Otherwise, developers cannot meaningfully query by bug summary, and will often fail to pay attention to your bug report when reviewing a 10 page bug list. Think of it as a "title". Good subject lines are specific and do not just say "Bug" or "It crashed". "Crash when I try to save" or "Forgets my theme preferences" are much better.

Description: What can you tell the developer about this bug?
Please provide as detailed of a problem diagnosis in this field as possible, including as much as possible of the following information. Feel free to cut and paste the bold headers directly into your bug as a guideline for the data we need.

Overview Description: More detailed expansion of summary.

Drag-selecting any page crashes Mac builds in NSGetFactory

Steps to Reproduce: The minimal set of steps necessary to trigger the bug. Include any special setup steps.

1) Open my IMAP inbox in the folder bar. 
2) Try to drag it to the shortcut bar.

Actual Results: What the application did after performing the above steps.

Evolution crashed.

Expected Results: What the application should have done, were the bug not present.

A shortcut to the inbox should have appeared in the inbox, or a warning should have been issued and no shortcut made.

Additional Builds and Platforms: Whether or not the bug takes place on other distributions, and (if you've seen it before) how long this bug has been taking place..

 - Also occurs on Debian stable and Red Hat 6.2.
 - Has occurred since the evo nightly on June 6th.

Additional Information: Anything else you think might be relevant.

You're done!

After double-checking your entries for any possible errors, press the "Commit" button, and your bug report will be part of the Bugzilla database.