- Filing a Bug
- ************
- Reporting a New Bug
- ===================
- Years of bug writing experience has been distilled for your reading
- pleasure into the Bug Writing Guidelines. While some of the advice is
- Mozilla-specific, the basic principles of reporting Reproducible,
- Specific bugs and isolating the Product you are using, the Version of
- the Product, the Component which failed, the Hardware Platform, and
- Operating System you were using at the time of the failure go a long
- way toward ensuring accurate, responsible fixes for the bug that bit
- you.
- Note: If you want to file a test bug to see how Bugzilla works, you
- can do it on one of our test installations on Landfill. Please don't
- do it on anyone's production Bugzilla installation.
- The procedure for filing a bug is as follows:
- 1. Click the New link available in the header or footer of pages,
- or the File a Bug link on the home page.
- 2. First, you have to select the product in which you found a bug.
- 3. You now see a form where you can specify the component (part of
- the product which is affected by the bug you discovered; if you
- have no idea, just select General if such a component exists), the
- version of the program you were using, the operating system and
- platform your program is running on and the severity of the bug (if
- the bug you found crashes the program, it's probably a major or a
- critical bug; if it's a typo somewhere, that's something pretty
- minor; if it's something you would like to see implemented, then
- that's an enhancement).
- 4. You also need to provide a short but descriptive summary of the
- bug you found. "My program is crashing all the time" is a very poor
- summary and doesn't help developers at all. Try something more
- meaningful or your bug will probably be ignored due to a lack of
- precision. In the Description, give a detailed list of steps to
- reproduce the problem you encountered. Try to limit these steps to
- a minimum set required to reproduce the problem. This will make the
- life of developers easier, and the probability that they consider
- your bug in a reasonable timeframe will be much higher.
- Note: Try to make sure that everything in the Summary is also in
- the Description. Summaries are often updated and this will ensure
- your original information is easily accessible.
- 5. As you file the bug, you can also attach a document (testcase,
- patch, or screenshot of the problem).
- 6. Depending on the Bugzilla installation you are using and the
- product in which you are filing the bug, you can also request
- developers to consider your bug in different ways (such as
- requesting review for the patch you just attached, requesting your
- bug to block the next release of the product, and many other
- product-specific requests).
- 7. Now is a good time to read your bug report again. Remove all
- misspellings; otherwise, your bug may not be found by developers
- running queries for some specific words, and so your bug would not
- get any attention. Also make sure you didn't forget any important
- information developers should know in order to reproduce the
- problem, and make sure your description of the problem is explicit
- and clear enough. When you think your bug report is ready to go,
- the last step is to click the Submit Bug button to add your report
- into the database.
- Clone an Existing Bug
- =====================
- Bugzilla allows you to "clone" an existing bug. The newly created bug
- will inherit most settings from the old bug. This allows you to track
- similar concerns that require different handling in a new bug. To use
- this, go to the bug that you want to clone, then click the Clone This
- Bug link on the bug page. This will take you to the Enter Bug page
- that is filled with the values that the old bug has. You can then
- change the values and/or text if needed.
- ======================================================================
- This documentation undoubtedly has bugs; if you find some, please file
- them here.