2 <title>Finding and Reporting Bugs</title>
4 <sect1 id="bug-reporting">
5 <title>How To Report A Bug</title>
8 Written by &name-gerard-patel; <email>&email-gerard-patel;</email>
11 (Extracted from <filename>wine/documentation/bugreports</filename>)
15 There are two ways for you to make a bug report. One uses a
16 simple perl script, and is recommended if you don't want to
17 spend a lot of time producing the report. It is designed for
18 use by just about anyone, from the newest of newbies to
19 advanced developers. You can also make a bug report the hard
20 way -- advanced developers will probably prefer this.
24 <title>The Easy Way</title>
28 Your computer <emphasis>must</emphasis> have perl on it
29 for this method to work. To find out if you have perl,
30 run <command>which perl</command>. If it returns something like
31 <filename>/usr/bin/perl</filename>, you're in business.
32 Otherwise, skip on down to "The Hard Way". If you aren't
33 sure, just keep on going. When you try to run the
34 script, it will become <emphasis>very</emphasis> apparent
35 if you don't have perl.
40 Change directory to <filename><dirs to
41 wine>/tools</filename>
46 Type in <command>./bug_report.pl</command> and follow
53 <systemitem>comp.emulators.ms-windows.wine</systemitem>
54 newsgroup with the "Nice Formatted Report" attatched. If
55 possible, upload the full debug output to a web/ftp
56 server and provide the address in your message.
63 <title>The Hard Way</title>
65 Some simple advice on making your bug report more useful
66 (and thus more likely to get answered and fixed):
70 <para>Post as much information as possible.</para>
72 This means we need more information than a simple "MS
73 Word crashes whenever I run it. Do you know why?"
74 Include at least the following information:
76 <itemizedlist spacing="compact">
78 <para>Version of Wine you're using (run <command>wine
83 Operating system you're using, what distribution (if
84 any), and what version
88 <para>Compiler and version (run <command>gcc -v</command>)</para>
91 <para>Windows version, if installed</para>
95 Program you're trying to run, its version number,
96 and a URL for where the program can be obtained (if
101 <para>Command line you used to start wine</para>
105 Any other information you think may be relevant or
106 helpful, such as X server version in case of X
107 problems, libc version etc.
114 Re-run the program with the <parameter>--debugmsg
115 +relay</parameter> option (i.e., <command>wine
116 --debugmsg +relay sol.exe</command>).
119 If Wine crashes while running your program, it is
120 important that we have this information to have a chance
121 at figuring out what is causing the crash. This can put
122 out quite a lot (several MB) of information, though, so
123 it's best to output it to a file. When the <prompt>Wine-dbg></prompt>
124 prompt appears, type <userinput>quit</userinput>.
127 You might want to try
128 <parameter>+relay,+snoop</parameter> instead of
129 <parameter>+relay</parameter>, but please note that
130 <parameter>+snoop</parameter> is pretty unstable and
131 often will crash earlier than a simple
132 <parameter>+relay</parameter>! If this is the case, then
133 please use <emphasis>only</emphasis> <parameter>+relay</parameter>!! A bug
134 report with a crash in <parameter>+snoop</parameter>
135 code is useless in most cases!
138 To get the trace output, use the following commands:
143 <term>all shells:</term>
146 <prompt>$ </prompt>echo quit | wine -debugmsg +relay [other_options] program_name >& filename.out;
147 <prompt>$ </prompt>tail -n 100 filename.out > report_file
150 (This will print wine's debug messages only to the file and then
151 auto-quit. It's probably a good idea to use this command, since wine
152 prints out so many debug msgs that they flood the terminal, eating CPU.)
157 <term>tcsh and other csh-like shells:</term>
160 <prompt>$ </prompt>wine -debugmsg +relay [other_options] program_name |& tee filename.out;
161 <prompt>$ </prompt>tail -100 filename.out > report_file
166 <term>bash and other sh-like shells:</term>
169 <prompt>$ </prompt>wine -debugmsg +relay [other_options] program_name 2>&1 | tee filename.out;
170 <prompt>$ </prompt>tail -100 filename.out > report_file
176 <filename>report_file</filename> will now contain the
177 last hundred lines of the debugging output, including
178 the register dump and backtrace, which are the most
179 important pieces of information. Please do not delete
180 this part, even if you don't understand what it means.
185 Post your report to the newsgroup
186 <systemitem>comp.emulators.ms-windows.wine</systemitem>
189 In your post, include all of the information from part
190 1), and insert the text from the output file in part 2).
191 If you do this, your chances of receiving some sort of
192 helpful response should be very good.
199 <title>Questions and comments</title>
201 If after reading this document there is something you
202 couldn't figure out, or think could be explained better, or
203 that should have been included, please post to
204 <systemitem>comp.emulators.ms-windows.wine</systemitem> to
205 let us know how this document can be improved.
211 <!-- Keep this comment at the end of the file
214 sgml-parent-document:("wine-doc.sgml" "set" "book" "chapter" "")