How To: Reporting Bugs Using Launchpad
One of my favorite books* has this to say about space: 'Space is big - really big - you just won't believe how vastly, hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. You may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space.' *You could say something similar about Launchpad, Canonical's web-based suite of free software development tools.
Written by Matthew Revell
Launchpad is big – really big – you just won't believe how many people use it, how many gigabytes of data it processes and how many things it can do. You may think your Ogg Vorbis collection is big, but that's just peanuts to Launchpad.
In issue three of Full Circle, Chris Rowson introduced Launchpad's code hosting. But that's just one part of Launchpad. Launchpad is all about collaboration. It makes it easy for individuals and teams to work together on free software, through its six main applications:
- Bug tracker: used by Ubuntu, Jokosher, Zope 3 and others.
- Code hosting: publicly host and mirror code with Bazaar version control.
- Translations: simple web-based software translation that anyone can use.
- Answers: easy way to provide and ask for help with Ubuntu and other software.
- Blueprint: feature planning.
- Soyuz: package building and distribution management.
As an Ubuntu, Kubuntu or Edubuntu user, you're most likely to come across Launchpad's bug tracker. It's one of the easiest bug trackers to use and has some uniquely powerful features. If you find the idea of reporting a bug slightly intimidating, don't worry: in just a few minutes you'll be able to report that bug that's been annoying you for the past few weeks.
Searching before reporting
Let's take a silly example of a bug: imagine that when you use OpenOffice.org Writer the F key makes the screen flash red. Naturally, this quickly becomes annoying.
Rather than fume in frustration, you decide to let the Ubuntu team know about your problem.
Many free software projects use Launchpad to manage their bug reports. Finding Ubuntu is easy, though. Simply visit: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/
There, you'll see a button marked Report a bug. Right now we're not going to actually report the bug. With millions of Ubuntu users, it's likely that someone else has already reported it. Launchpad helps us to save the time of Ubuntu's volunteer bug squashers by searching for similar bug reports.
Now's a good time to think how to describe the problem you're having. You need to cover all the important points without making it too wordy.
Journalists often report news stories by answering six standard questions: who, what, where, when, why and how. You can use a similar method to summarise your bug reports:
What? What happened that you weren't expecting?
How? What did you do to make the bug happen?
Where? In which application (or part of an application) did the bug occur?
When? What were you doing before the bug occurred? If relevant, what else was the computer doing at the same time?
Why? What makes you certain that this is a bug and not an intended feature?
In our example, we might come up with the following answers:
What? Screen flashes red.
How? Pressing the F key.
Where? In OpenOffice.org Writer.
When? While editing text.
Why? I've never seen a word processor make the screen flash red before.
Putting these answers together, in as few words as possible, will give you your bug summary. In the case of our example, we could say:
Click the Report a bug button, enter your bug summary, then click Continue. Launchpad will search for similar bugs and list the summaries of any it finds. Check the list to see if any of the bug reports cover the problem you found.
If any of the bug reports covers your issue, click the radio button beside it and then click the Subscribe to this bug report button. Subscribing to a bug report will give you email updates when the bug's status changes or someone adds a comment. If you have any further information on the bug, you can add your own comment.
On the other hand, if you don't see a bug report that covers the issue you encountered, select No I'd like to report a new bug at the bottom of the page. The page will expand, allowing you to tell Launchpad exactly where you found the bug and to expand on the summary.
Where did you find the bug?
You probably already know that Ubuntu is made up of packages of software. Launchpad tracks bugs as they affect these packages. To tell Launchpad where you found the bug, you need to know the name of the package where you found the bug.
Finding the package name is easy. Click Choose... beneath the In what package did you find this bug? header. Now you can search for the exact package name where you found the bug. In our example, enter “openoffice”.
Although Launchpad may return a number of package names similar to your search term, it's usually obvious which is the right package. For example, in our example there are several packages which include the term “openoffice” but the main OpenOffice.org package is called simply “openoffice.org”.
Don't worry if you're not sure which package to choose. Select the one that seems most likely to be the right one or, if you really aren't sure at all, you can choose I don't know.
Writing a good bug report
Your single line bug summary already explains what went wrong, so the main aim of your bug report's "Further information" section is to allow other people to reproduce the bug themselves. Imagine that you're sitting next to a developer who is hoping to fix the bug and that they've never seen the bug before.
Think back to how you originally found the bug, then break it down into steps. Describe the steps you took and then add other relevant information, such as the version of Ubuntu you're running, your hardware architecture and so on.
Taking our example bug, you might write:
- Opened a new document in OpenOffice.org Writer.
- Placed the cursor in the blank document.
- Typed as normal. In the course of typing, I hit the F key and the screen flashed red.
Further info: this happened on both lower and upper case Fs. Running Ubuntu 7.04 on x86.
When you're ready, click Submit bug report.
What happens next
Congratulations! You've submitted your bug report!
Soon after you submit your bug report, you'll receive a confirmation email. At the same time, Launchpad will send an email to the Ubuntu Bugs team to let them know about your bug report. They'll check your report, attempt to reproduce it and, if they need to, ask you for more information.
Launchpad makes it really easy to report bugs that you find in Ubuntu. In a future issue of Full Circle we'll look at some of the more advanced things you can do!
* Of course, that's Douglas Adam's fantastic Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
