Overview
Bug reports are an important part of an open source project and having community submitted bug reports will help improve the product. This wiki article will outline how to submit a bug report in the best manner possible for the core team to address.
Bug Submission Process - I've found a bug, now what?
With Umbraco we use the CodePlex issue register to track bugs. You can find the issue register here: http://umbraco.codeplex.com/workitem/list/basic
Step 1 - Search for an already existing report for your bug
Your bug may have been already been reported so it's important to do a search using the CodePlex issue register to make sure you're not duplicating bug reports. Duplicate reports for a given issue can dilute the importance of that issue as there isn't one centralized place where people are listing their experiences, voting, etc. Our advice:
- Try searching a few times, using different search filters, to ensure that the bug hasn't been already listed using slightly different terminology, or that the bug has already been resolved.
- If you find that your bug has already been reported then add your comments and your finding to that report.
- Please make your comments useful. If you want to say "me too" then please just "Vote" that's what it's for.
- Vote! The more voted for a bug is the more attention it receives by the core team (or patch submitters).
CodePlex users can subscribe to a notification of issues (new issues and changes) so by adding to an existing bug report it will be brought up on the daily digest.
Step 2 - Log into CodePlex
So you've searched and your bug isn't on CodePlex, you'd better add it! For this you're going to need to have a CodePlex account (or a Windows Live ID) which is free, and log in. Once logged in navigate to the Create Issue page: http://umbraco.codeplex.com/WorkItem/Create
Step 3 - Submit a new bug report
In this step the more information you can provide the easier and faster it is to solve the problem.
Please provide information as much infomration as possible such as:
- what you were doing,
- how you were doing it and
- what you were expecting.
- any error message you might have received (stack traces, mmmm we love stack traces)
- If you can include screenshots, log files, etc, ensure that they are also attached.
For more information on how to write a useful bug report, please visit this link
Step 4 - Subscribe, engage and please be patient
Your bug report is written, you've submitted it, now what?
- As mentioned above CodePlex sends out daily emails about the issue register, so it will be seen.
- Subscribe to change notifications of your issue, so you can be aware of its status through its life cycle.
- Put a twitter comment with the #umbraco hashtag asking if others have experienced it and requesting their feedback **
** Feel free to advertise your bug report, but please be sensible. Remember the core team are volunteers and they don't like to be bullied, they have feelings too ;).