Tuesday, June 10, 2014

How to report an issue (aka a bug)

So much time could be saved if everyone followed these simple steps when reporting issues:

1. What did you do? (the dreaded steps)
2. What happened? (screenshots, logs etc are useful here)
3. What did you expect to happen?

Steps are crucial to try and reproduce the problem.

 Describing what actually happened and contrasting it with what you expected to happen is essential to decide what you saw was a bug, a misunderstanding or something else entirely :).

A simple example:

"Market window: Cannot sort on the Time column
1. Start the application with an empty workspace
2. Press Ctrl+M and type SSE<Enter> to open a market window
3. Double-click on the Time column
exp: The market data should be realtime-sorted on the changing Time column
act: Nothing happens, stock list stays in market segment/alphabetical order
<attached: screenshot>"

[Updated with example]

3 comments:

Bruce McGee said...

Exactly right.

Anonymous said...

I've always said, "it doesn't work" are the three least useful words in the history of bug reporting.

Larry Hengen said...

I find that using CamStudio is very useful. No longer do users miss a critical step in reproducing it. Also, using MadExcept or Eurekalog is helpful.



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