                              Wine Documentation                               
Prev                                                                       Next
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter 6. Finding and Reporting Bugs

6.1. How To Report A Bug

Written by (???)

(Extracted from wine/documentation/bugreports)

There are two ways for you to make a bug report. One uses a simple perl script,
and is recommended if you don't want to spend a lot of time producing the
report. It is designed for use by just about anyone, from the newest of newbies
to advanced developers. You can also make a bug report the hard way -- advanced
developers will probably prefer this.

6.1.1. The Easy Way

 1. Your computer must have perl on it for this method to work. To find out if
    you have perl, run which perl. If it returns something like /usr/bin/perl,
    you're in business. Otherwise, skip on down to "The Hard Way". If you
    aren't sure, just keep on going. When you try to run the script, it will
    become very apparent if you don't have perl.
   
 2. Change directory to <dirs to wine>/tools
   
 3. Type in ./bug_report.pl and follow the directions.
   
 4. Post a message to the comp.emulators.ms-windows.wine newsgroup with the
    "Nice Formatted Report" attatched. If possible, upload the full debug
    output to a web/ftp server and provide the address in your message.
   
6.1.2. The Hard Way

Some simple advice on making your bug report more useful (and thus more likely
to get answered and fixed):

 1. Post as much information as possible.
   
    This means we need more information than a simple "MS Word crashes whenever
    I run it. Do you know why?" Include at least the following information:
   
      + Version of Wine you're using (run wine -v)
       
      + Operating system you're using, what distribution (if any), and what
        version
       
      + Compiler and version (run gcc -v)
       
      + Windows version, if installed
       
      + Program you're trying to run, its version number, and a URL for where
        the program can be obtained (if available)
       
      + Command line you used to start wine
       
      + Any other information you think may be relevant or helpful, such as X
        server version in case of X problems, libc version etc.
       
 2. Re-run the program with the --debugmsg +relay option (i.e., wine --debugmsg
    +relay sol.exe).
   
    If Wine crashes while running your program, it is important that we have
    this information to have a chance at figuring out what is causing the
    crash. This can put out quite a lot (several MB) of information, though, so
    it's best to output it to a file. When the Wine-dbg> prompt appears, type 
    quit.
   
    You might want to try +relay,+snoop instead of +relay, but please note that
    +snoop is pretty unstable and often will crash earlier than a simple
    +relay! If this is the case, then please use only +relay!! A bug report
    with a crash in +snoop code is useless in most cases!
   
    To get the trace output, use the following commands:
   
    all shells:
        $ echo quit | wine -debugmsg +relay [other_options] program_name >& filename.out; 
        $ tail -n 100 filename.out > report_file
                          
       
        (This will print wine's debug messages only to the file and then
        auto-quit. It's probably a good idea to use this command, since wine
        prints out so many debug msgs that they flood the terminal, eating
        CPU.)
       
    tcsh and other csh-like shells:
        $ wine -debugmsg +relay [other_options] program_name |& tee filename.out;
        $ tail -100 filename.out > report_file
                          
    bash and other sh-like shells:
        $ wine -debugmsg +relay [other_options] program_name 2>&1 | tee filename.out;
        $ tail -100 filename.out > report_file
                          
   
    report_file will now contain the last hundred lines of the debugging
    output, including the register dump and backtrace, which are the most
    important pieces of information. Please do not delete this part, even if
    you don't understand what it means.
   
 3. Post your report to the newsgroup comp.emulators.ms-windows.wine
   
    In your post, include all of the information from part 1), and insert the
    text from the output file in part 2). If you do this, your chances of
    receiving some sort of helpful response should be very good.
   
6.1.3. Questions and comments

If after reading this document there is something you couldn't figure out, or
think could be explained better, or that should have been included, please post
to comp.emulators.ms-windows.wine to let us know how this document can be
improved.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Prev                                 Home                                  Next
Command-Line Options                  Up                 Wine Developer's Guide
