Reporting bugs

If you find a bug in one of the ROX applications then please report it! There are several places where you can report problems:

• The rox-devel mailing list should be used if a bug needs to be tracked down (so lots of people can try to find it).
• There is also a news interface to the mailing lists, if you don't want to subscribe.
• The bug-tracking system can be used too, but please include your email address as we often need more information to solve the problem.

Information to include in a bug report

1. Your operating system (eg, Debian Linux/testing)
2. The program name and version ("Your program doesn't work" is too vague)
3. Does the problem always happen, or just sometimes?
4. Anything unusual about your system we should know?
5. Did any errors get displayed? What were they? (copy them down exactly)
6. Did you read the FAQ and search the Mailing Lists? (we're more sympathetic if you made an effort)
7. For crashes and warnings, the more information you can provide the better. See below for instructions on collecting useful information

Please:

• Don't email a developer individually (except for security holes). Always use the Mailing Lists.
• Do send all the information in one go ("I've found a problem", "What is it?", "One of your programs doesn't work right", "Which one?", etc is very annoying)

How To Ask Questions The Smart Way contains good generic advice on reporting bugs. (They just provide advice on bug reports, they don't fix ROX bugs so don't ask them!)

Tip: When trying to fix a problem yourself, start by noting down the original error messages. Sometimes people try all sorts of crazy things (removing or upgrading libraries, moving files, etc) before finally writing to the mailing list for help, by which time they've forgotten what the original problem was!

(And there's nothing wrong with trying to fix things yourself; you'll learn plenty. But keep a log. It's hard to help you fix your system when you can't remember what you did!)

The following pages contain notes on some commonly-seen bugs, and instructions on how to collect useful information to send in bug reports.

Reporting bugs using Zero Install

If you are running your program using Zero Install then you can use the built-in bug reporting tool (in version 0.26 and later). Right-click over the application in ROX-Filer and choose Versions... from the menu:

Then right-click over the component with the bug (if unsure, just pick the one at the top, which is the main program):

Fill in the boxes. It will automatically fill in the bottom box with information about your system and which version of the program and libraries you're using. If the program prints errors when it fails, click on the 'Run it now and record the output' button to add them to the report too: