Bugzilla

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This page describes the normal usage of Bugzilla. For Quality Assurance (QA) tasks see QA/BugzillaAdministration.

NOTICE: Gnome is shutting down creating new bugs in their Bugzilla on 1 July so GnuCash will migrate its bugs to a new self-hosted instance at https://bugs.gnucash.org at 2018-06-29 20:00:00 UTC (that's Friday 29 June 22:00 Europe, 16:00 US Eastern, and Saturday, 30 June 04:00 Western Australia). All open GnuCash bugs on Gnome Bugzilla will be closed RESOLVED OBSOLETE at that time and all bugs, open or closed, will get a comment with the new URL for that bug. We will disable creating new bugs before beginning the final migration and enable creating bugs on GnuCash's Bugzilla when it's complete. We expect the migration to take less than two hours.

User accounts and email addresses will be migrated but passwords and email "watch" lists will not. Existing users will have to reset their passwords after migration is complete using the "Forgot Password" link at the top of the page. Watch lists (to get the same bug-mail as other users including the "pseudo-users", see below, will need to be recreated on the Email Preferences tab in Preferences reachable by selecting Preferences at the top of any page.

Introduction

If you discover a problem with the program or its documentation (known as a bug), you may want to record the bug so that it can be fixed by the developers. The GnuCash project uses the Bugzilla repository maintained by the Gnome Project. Bugzilla includes bugs and enhancement requests for a wide number of projects, including GnuCash.

Because Gnomes Bugzilla manages bugs for many projects, it can be useful to see only bugs of GnuCash. There is a specific GnuCash "Product" page which allows you to see GnuCash bugs. On this page, you can see the bugs for GnuCash arranged by component. The number of bugs for each component is clickable, and will display the list of the open bugs for that component.

Triage

Before filing a new bug, you should check to see whether the problem or suggestion has already been made. It may be still open or already closed after the date of your release.

Here are several links to different Bugzilla sections:

Other Resources

  • Uservoice is an interesting forum for discussion of new feature requests (but not bug reports).
Usually each (accepted) feature request should get one Bugzilla entry.
Use their Request Tracker at the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN).

Commenting on existing bugs or entering new ones

If a bug has already been entered for the problem or enhancement you have identified, you can add comments to that bug.

If there is no bug, then you can Open a new GnuCash bug or enhancement Request.

When reporting a crash, it may be helpful to provide the developers with the stack trace and some of the errors that are generated. See Stack Trace and Tracefile for information on how to produce a stack trace for your bug report, and logging to learn about capturing and providing error messages and filtering detail.

For documentation bugs, most commonly use git-maint in the version field, which is used to update the documentation on existing GnuCash features. If you are documenting a new feature (for example, a feature only in a future stable release), use git-master. See Git - Branches for more on this.

bugzillas help has useful information on using Bugzilla.
Tip
If you refer to other bugs in your text, we suggest to use the form bug nnnnnn - Title. Bugzilla will then add a link and the reader saves time if the title can be read without following the link.
  • Do not copy and paste log files. Instead append them as attachments.

Attachments

If a program crash or freeze only happens on a specific file (for example, a data file, an import file, or a (modified) report), it can be useful to attach a copy of that file to your bug report.

If the crash is caused by a data file, you should attach the XML file in uncompressed format (see Edit->Preferences->General->Files->Compress Files). Bear in mind that this data is available on the internet, and take steps to protect your financial data, e.g., by using the ObfuscateScript. If the file is really big, try to create a minimal example.

When uploading, adjust the mime type of your file. Uncompressed gnucash data files are of type text/xml. Most import files and log files are of type text/plain.

Configure Notifications

If you want to receive email notifications about a particular bug, you can add the email address that is your Bugzilla id to the CC list on the bug. Bugzilla will do this for you by default if you take any action on the bug page.

If you want to be notified about all changes to particular categories of bugs, including new ones, add one or more of the following email addresses to your User Watch list in your Bugzilla Email Preferences: After login click the Preferences item in the Bugzilla menu bar and select the Email Preferences tab. The watch list is underneath the table with all of the check boxes. The email addresses and the groups they monitor are:

Group Elements
gnucash-core-maint@gnucash.bugs Backend-SQL, Backend-XML, Budgets, Build System, Business, Currency and Commodity, Engine, Python Bindings, Scheduled Transactions
gnucash-documentation-maint@gnucash.bugs Documentation, Translations, Website
gnucash-general-maint@gnucash.bugs General
gnucash-import-maint@gnome.bugs Import-AqBanking, Import-CSV, Import-OFX, Import-Other, Import-QIF, Import-QSF, TXF Export
gnucash-mac-maint@gnucash.bugs MacOS
gnucash-reports-maint@gnucash.bugs Check Printing, Reports
gnucash-ui-maint@gnucash.bugs Register, Regist-2, User Interface General
gnucash-win-maint@gnucash.bugs Windows

Help Wanted

For those people who might like to help manage bugs on Bugzilla, there is additional information in QA/BugzillaAdministration.

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