Historical: Reporting Bugs and Fixes
Last updated at 11:19 am UTC on 22 July 2005
This is a Historical page and reflects past practices in the Squeak community. For current information about how to report new bugs, fixes, enhancements, and related see Reporting Bugs and Fixes.
What to put in the subject line:
The post should include in the subject line a "keyword" tag. This is an upper-case keyword in square brackets:
| [FIX] | bug fixes |
| [ENH] | enhancements of existing features |
| [GOODIE] | addition of a new feature |
| [ANN] | announcements |
| [TEST] | see Submitting SUnit tests |
| [BUG] | for bug reports (no longer used, use Mantis Server instead) |
When you release updates to an enhancement please start your post's subject line with exactly the same subject as in your first post. (It's okay if it is prepended with an "Re:".) That way, different versions will be grouped in the Bug Fixes Archive. You may add additional version comments in round parens. This also means that your first post should not have a version number outside round parens. So a well-formed subject would look like this:
Subject: [ENH] Triangular Browser (v1.2, added animation)
If your changeset involves any VM or VM plugin changes (basically any Slang or C code), please also include a [VM] keyword (such as [FIX][VM]), so that the VM maintainers will be able to keep track of it.
How keyword tags are used:
The Bug Fixes Archive uses these keywords to automatically compile its report on [FIX], [ENH], [GOODIE], [ANN] submissions.
The items in the Bug Fixes Archive are then scanned by The Harvesters for possible inclusion into the main Squeak release. This is part of the Harvesting Process.
How to submit a bug report:
Assuming you encountered a walk back (Debugger window comes up), there is a shortcut that allows you to organize a lot of the important information automatically. From the debugger menu, do "mail out bug report". Copy this debugger-stack information into a bug report in the Mantis Server bugtracking system, and close the mail-out window in Squeak without sending it. Remember to add the relevant context - what you were doing, whether you had any extra packages loaded, what you've already tried to find the problem. That way people can quickly focus on things you don't already know.
How to submit a [FIX] or [ENH] changeset:
You can very easily submit changesets from within Squeak! If you're looking at a changeset in a Change Sorter window, there is a special mail to list menu item which will take care of compressing the changeset, prompting you for an appropriate subject keyword, and submitting it to the list.
If you are submitting a fix "manually", please compress (gzip format) your changeset file before emailing it to the list. You can use the "compress" menu item in the Squeak FileList window to do this. This will prevent problems with CR/LF conventions and tabs being converted to spaces. The file should be send as MIME attachment, preferably in BASE64 encoding.
Whichever way you submit as changeset, please include a preamble with your changeset, which briefly describes the changes. To do this, open a change sorter on your changeset, and select "add preamble" from the pop-up menu. Before this, you should give the changeset a reasonable name. The convention is to start with a lower-case character and end with a "-" followed by the author's initials (e.g., "unrealMath-abc"). The name should not exceed 26 characters.
How to post comments on [FIX] or [ENH] submissions:
If you tested someone else's submission you are encouraged to comment on it to make it easier for The Harvesters to evaluate that particular fix. There are special formatting rules for Commenting Bugs and Fixes, which are also used by the Harvesters as part of the Harvesting Process.
Licensing:
Squeak-L is the recommended license to use when posting fixes/enhancements/goodies to the list. If you do not specify a license for code that you submit for inclusion in Squeak, it is licensed under Squeak-L by default. As a general rule, code submitted under licenses other than Squeak-L will not be considered for inclusion in the main Squeak release.
More Information
For more information on the bugfix/release process, see FAQ: How do fixes and enhancements become updates? and Harvesting Process FAQ.
