Appendix A. How to report bugs

Table of Contents
A.1. How to fix bugs
A.2. How to report bugs
A.3. Where to report bugs
A.4. What to report
A.5. Crashes

Good bug reports are a very valuable contribution to the development of any software project. But just like writing good software, good problem reports involve some work. Please realize that most developers are extremely busy and receive obscene amounts of email. So while your feedback is crucial in improving wzdftpd and very much appreciated, please understand that you have to provide all of the information we request and follow the instructions in this document closely.

A.1. How to fix bugs

If you feel have the necessary skills you are invited to have a go at fixing the bug yourself. The people on the wzdftpd-devel mailing list will assist you if you have questions.

A.2. How to report bugs

First of all please try the latest CVS version of wzdftpd as your bug might already be fixed there. Development moves extremely fast, most problems in official releases are reported within days or even hours, so please use CVS to report bugs.

Please do not send bug reports privately to individual developers. This is community work and thus there might be several people interested in it. Sometimes other users already experienced your troubles and know how to circumvent a problem even if it is a bug in wzdftpd code.

Please describe your problem in as much detail as possible. Do a little detective work to narrow down the circumstances under which the problem occurs. Does the bug only show up in certain situations? Is it specific to certain files or file types? Does it occur with only one module or is it module independent? Can you reproduce it with all backends? The more information you provide the better are our chances at fixing your problem. Please do not forget to also include the valuable information requested below, we will be unable to properly diagnose your problem otherwise.

A.3. Where to report bugs

Subscribe to the wzdftpd-users mailing list and post your bug report to wzdftpd-users@lists.sourceforge.net.

You can also use the wzdftpd tracker to submit bugreports, requests, patches, etc.

A.4. What to report

You may need to include log, configuration or sample files in your bug report. If some of them are quite big then it is better to include a link to a url where the files are accessible to the developpers.

A.5. Crashes

You have to run wzdftpd inside gdb and send us the complete output or if you have a core dump of the crash you can extract useful information from the Core file. Here's how:

How to conserve information about a reproducible crash.


    Recompile wzdftpd with debugging code enabled:
  
  ./configure --enable-debug
  make
and then run wzdftpd within gdb using:
  gdb wzdftpd
You are now within gdb. Type:
  run [options-to-wzdftpd]
and reproduce your crash. As soon as you did it, gdb will return you to the command line prompt where you have to enter
  bt

How to conserve information about a reproducible crash.


    Simply execute the following command on your command line:
  
  gdb wzdftpd -core=core_file
and enter:
  bt

What to do with these infos ?

 
    Please attach the backtrace (what you obtained using the debugger) to
you bugreport. The core file is important, so do not delete it - do not
post it however, as core files are often large.