Product Specific Guidelines

Here is a list of guidelines for triaging bugs that are specific to individual products in bugzilla. We try to keep just a few (no more than three or four) short guidelines for each product, possibly including a link to another page if a certain product has many additional guidelines to provide. There are no specific guidelines for a product at this time if the product is not listed here.

If you are a maintainer, please help us keep this list updated.

• Important: Do not triage bug reports from the following products (i.e. skip them):

  • gucharmap
  • pango
  • vte

• Banshee: See https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Banshee/CommonQuestions/Logs for how to provide logs

• Brasero: In case of problems with burning media, please attach a detailed "log" file by starting brasero from a terminal / command line with the following command and reproducing your problem: brasero -g --brasero-media-debug > log 2>&1

• Control-Center: Area of Gnome that deals with setting preferences

  • Any problems related to versions before 2.4.x can be closed as WONTFIX
  • Knowing what platform and what version of X is extremely important.
  • If the problem is keyboard related, please request information about the user's keyboard configuartion, specifically the output of:
    • xprop -root | grep XKB
    • xdpyinfo | head
  • Bugs in the documentation should be moved to product 'gnome-user-docs', component 'user-guide'.

• D-Bus : The D-Bus message bus system

  • Bugs do not belong in Gnome's Bugzilla but here: http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/dbus

• Ekiga: VoIP software using H.323 and SIP, also supporting video

  • If possible get a backtrace from the user with all thread backtraces (i.e. using 'bt thread apply all' instead of 'bt' in GDB).
  • It is important to find out how the user installed it, whether from a distribution or from source code.
  • If they were using a camera the model number is helpful, as is the drive they are using to get access to the camera.

• Empathy: text, voice, and video chat application, built atop Telepathy

  • Debugging tips -- Recent Empathy versions (2.27 onwards) include a Debugging Console that allows the user to retrieve debugging logs from supported Telepathy Connection Managers.

  • Tips for troubleshooting specific protocols

• Epiphany: Webkit based browser, also called "Web"

  • If the component is set to BugBuddyBugs and it is a good report, please move it to the correct component (that component exists to separate the triaged wheat from the untriaged chaff).

  • If the Adobe Flash plugin occurs in the stack trace, just close the bug with the crash-flash-plugin canned reply.

  • If the Sun Java, VLC, or any other non-gnome plugin occurs in the stack trace, close it with the notgnome canned reply.

• Evince:

  • Point the user to https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Evince/Debugging

  • If the component is set to BugBuddyBugs and it is a good report, please move it to the correct component (that component exists to separate the triaged wheat from the untriaged chaff).

  • If bug is problem with pdf, it's probably a poppler problem. Read Poppler bugs

  • Otherwise, feel free to check if bug is reproduced and confirm it

• Evolution:

  • If the component is set to BugBuddyBugs and it is a good report, please move it to the correct component (that component exists to separate the triaged wheat from the untriaged chaff).

  • Additional debug hints can be found at https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Evolution/Debugging

• Geary:

  • $ geary --debug --log-serializer --log-deserializer > geary.log

• gedit:

  • See Apps/Gedit/ReportingBugs.

• GIMP: GNU Image Manipulation Program

  • The GIMP Developer FAQ contains a section about how to handle bugs in Bugzilla. Pay attention to the parts about accidental duplicates (marked as INVALID) and how to properly mark a bug as RESOLVED FIXED with references to ChangeLog entries.

  • To get a backtrace for crashes on Microsoft Windows, DrMingw from http://code.google.com/p/jrfonseca/wiki/DrMingw is a suitable tool.

• GJS:

  • A small, self-contained JS program to be run with the command-line client that reproduces the bug is best. Reports saying "I ran this code in my gnome-shell extension" are not very helpful, since they could be bugs in the extension, or gnome-shell, or any intervening layer in the stack.
  • "critical" = this is preventing most or all users from using GJS and must be fixed before the next minor release.
  • "major" = this bug is causing a crash (segfault, not JS exception) from valid JS code.

  • "normal" = normal

  • "minor" = this is a bug, but it happens very rarely or has only cosmetic consequences.
  • "enhancement" = this is a feature request, not yet implemented.

• Gnome-Desktop:

  • Unless the bug is related to libgnome-desktop (i.e it has something to do with code for handling launchers/.desktop files), the icons in the pixmaps dir or .directory files, it doesn't belong in this module.
  • If the bug is related to a failure to properly handle .desktop file, request a copy of that file.

• gnome-doc-utils: Documentation utilities

  • See Yelp

• Gnome-Games: Package that contains all the games for Gnome

  • Getting stack traces for most GNOME games is hard. When asking for a stack trace ask that they either do it as root or remove the setgid bit from the game in question.

  • If the component is set to BugBuddyBugs and it is a good report, please move it to the correct component (that component exists to separate the triaged wheat from the untriaged chaff).

• Gnome-Panel: GNOME 2 component for applications related to application, taskbar, and applet layout

  • To debug with gdb do
    1. $ gdb /usr/bin/gnome-panel
    2. $ (gdb) set args --replace
    3. $ (gdb) run

• Gnome-Pilot: GNOME applet for management of your Palm PDA

  • It can be useful to figure out if the problem is with gnome-pilot or the lower, pilot-link, layer. To isolate (assuming you have pilot-xfer installed) try the following:

    1. Kill gpilotd (you may need to remove the pilot applet from the panel, and then do killall gpilotd from a terminal window).

    2. Now try running pilot-xfer: pilot-xfer -p /dev/pilot -l (or '-p /dev/ttyUSB0', or '-p /dev/ttyUSB1', or '-p net:', etc)

    3. If that doesn't work, then you have most likely got a problem with your kernel/udev/usb/cables, etc, not gnome-pilot.
  • It can also be useful to see the output from the gpilotd daemon. To do this:

    1. Kill gpilotd (you may need to remove the pilot applet from the panel, and then do killall gpilotd from a terminal window).

    2. Restart gpilotd (the default location is /usr/libexec/gpilotd, but this may be distribution-dependent).

• Gnome-Terminal: Shell Component frontend for vte terminal emulator widget

  • Determine whether the bug pertains to the gnome terminal user interface itself, or the terminal emulation. In the latter case it should be moved to the vte product and not be triaged further in accordance with the special instructions below for vte.

  • Otherwise, evaluate the bug report according to the GNOME Terminal Bug Reporting Guidelines and Debugging Guidelines. If it does not conform, and was filed by a end user, advise the user to re-file the bug on her distribution's bug tracker and close the bug as INVALID.

• Gnome-Screenshot:

  • Any bug regarding the inability to take a screenshot while a menu is open are duplicates of bug 100903 and should be marked as such.

• Gnome-Themes: Themes component of gnome 2.4 default themes

  • If the bug involves the Theme Preferences dialog crashing or otherwise misbehaving, the bug should be re-assigned to gnome-control-center/theme-manager.

• Gstreamer: Framework for streaming media such as audio and video

  • If the crash is related to a specific media file, please ask the user to provide a link to that media file. (Or other means of accessing it)
  • Many bugs filed against other products (e.g. gst-player, rhythmbox, totem, etc.) that use gstreamer should be filed against gstreamer instead. If the backtrace of such a bug shows that the application is crashing in a function that starts with 'gst_', it is probably a gstreamer bug.
  • It is often useful to have full debugging information compressed and attached to the bug. One can get debugging information by adding '--gst-debug-level=6' to the application command line and redirecting output to a file.

  • Try running gst-launch-1.0 -v playbin uri="file:///path/to/file" and save the output.

• Gtk+: The GTK+ widget toolkit:

  • If you can reproduce it with the gtk3-demo or the test programs that built in the tests/ subdirectory, that will be most convenient. Otherwise, ask to include a short, self-contained test program that exhibits the behavior.
  • Bugs that can be reproduced within the GIMP are almost as good as bugs that can be reproduced in testgtk
  • If the bug was a crash, the exact text that was printed out when the crash occurred
  • If there is a stack trace, and the error is an X error, it will be more useful if the stacktrace is produced running the test program with the --sync command line option

  • Both GTK+ and GLib do not use the NEW state: an UNCONFIRMED bug either goes in NEEDINFO or in RESOLVED state.

• Gucharmap:

  • As requested by the maintainer, please do not triage the bug reports of this module.

• Hamster Applet:

  • See https://projecthamster.wordpress.com/trouble-shooting/ for debug instructions

• Metacity: Window Manager of the Gnome 2 Platform

  • A verbose log is useful for all crashes, but in particular for any "weird behavior in a particular situation" sort of bugs that we cannot duplicate easily. Such a log can be obtained by:
    1. Reduce your desktop to as few windows as possible to reproduce the bug
    2. Run METACITY_VERBOSE=1 METACITY_USE_LOGFILE=1 metacity --replace
    3. On stdout metacity will print the name of the logfile
    4. Reproduce the bug as quickly as possible
    5. Kill the metacity you started above to stop the logfile from growing any longer
    6. Compress the logfile and attach it to your bug report

• Nautilus: File Manager for the Gnome Platform

  • Bugs in the documentation should be moved to product 'gnome-user-docs', component 'user-guide'.

• NetworkManager: See https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/NetworkManager/Debugging

• Orca: Screen reader for applications

  • Basic information in case it's really a bug in Orca: https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/Orca/Debugging

  • GNOME's accessibility (a11y) stack is complex. Bugs can be in the a11y tool (screen reader, screen magnifier, etc.), in the at-spi2 or atk modules, or in the a11y support code of a certain application. To find out whether the bug is in Orca itself or in the application or toolkit, you can try with Accerciser:

    • Do you see the objects (that should have been presented by Orca) in Accerciser in the left pane under the affected running application?
    • Do the objects emit/create accessible events in Accerciser's Event Monitor when you navigate in the application?
    • Do the objects have the needed accessible properties (e.g. the name of items is shown in the left pane next to the icon for the specific application) and the correct role in the "Role" column?
    • Do the objects implement the needed accessible interfaces (the "Interface viewer" in Accerciser should NOT show the object/widget as "not implemented" and greyed out but instead as active)? If you cannot answer "yes" to all these four questions, the bug is likely not in Orca, but in the application or toolkit.
  • To find out whether it is in the application or in the toolkit, and if you have an idea which kind of widget is affected by the bug:
    • In case the toolkit is gtk3: Run "gtk3-demo" to start "GTK+ Code Demos". If the command is not available make sure that the gtk3 development package is installed.
    • Start the demo for the specific widget by double-clicking and listen to it in Accerciser
    • Check if the demo emits/creates accessible events in Accerciser's Event Monitor. If it does it is an Application bug. If it does not it is a toolkit bug.

• Pango: An internationalized text handling library

  • As requested by the maintainer, please do not triage the bug reports of this module.

• Phone Manager: Control some aspects of your mobile phone

  • Bugs without debug logs or phone make and model are most likely NEEDINFO.
  • Bugs that are reproduceable with gnokii should be closed with resolution NOTGNOME and the reporter referred to gnokii bug tracker.

  See Reporting bugs on Phone Manager's Home Page for debugging instructions.

• Rygel:

  • Basic information in case it's really a bug in Orca: https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/Rygel/Debugging

• Totem: A movie player, also called "Videos"

  • See Totem's wiki page on bug reporting

• Vte: Terminal Emulation Component

  • As requested by the maintainer, please do not triage the bug reports of this module.

• Yelp: Help and Documentation Browser for the Gnome Platform

  • See Yelp

• Zenity: Component to allow dialog boxes from outside sources, such as scripts