How to Report Bugs in LibreOffice
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Contents |
Great step !
You are about to make an important contribution to LibreOffice: a clear bug report is an important help for our developers. So thanks for doing this!
In order to make the life of the people that handle the bug reports a bit easier, we have some tips to help you.
Important is to submit bugs that are not already known. Maybe there already is a report for your issue, in which case you may be able add a useful comment.
Both the
- Bug Submission Assistant (great for first reports!) and
- the instructions on Reporting a bug in few Steps ,
will help you fast with your bug report.
(If you want to read more details, you can read some of the sections below here.)
General information
- Is the problem really a bug? If you require help using LibreOffice, consider posting your question at LibreOffice Users Mailing List.
- If you are not sure what component your problem is about, choose the Libreoffice component. A bug triager will assign the proper component. For more information about that have a look at "BugTriage". If it is a higher priority issue (broken parts, regression, etc), experienced users can assign it to one of the developers listed on the FindTheExpert page.
- If nobody reviewed your report within appropriate time (24 h for a critical bug 14 days for an enhancement request) consider asking someone else to reproduce your bug report on the users@global.libreoffice.org mailing list, or on the #libreoffice IRC channel.
- Please file a separate bug report for each issue!
- Bugs in LibreOffice can be reported directly in Bugzilla.
How to use the Bug Submission Assistant
- Click here and follow instructions in the Assistant
- Before you submit a new bug report, please check for existing, similar bug reports. After selecting a subcomponent in the Bug Submission Assistant a list with Bugs already reported for the same component will be shown. If the short description of the bug matches your problem, click on the link to see more. With Edit Search at the bottom of the corresponding Bugzilla page you can modify the search according to your needs. If you find an existing report concerning your problem, no additional report is required, but may be you can contribute additional information.
- When describing your bug report description hints on What to include in bug reports and BugReport_Details might be useful.
Reporting a bug in few Steps
- Check for duplicates as described under Common
- Before you submit a new bug report, please check for existing, similar bug reports. On BugReport_Details a simple click on the Sub component name under a Component heading opens a list with Bugs already reported. A click on ⓘ leads you to help concerning the Subcomponents. With Edit Search at the bottom of the Bugzilla page you can modify the search according to your needs.
- Start a new report. On BugReport_Details a simple click on the ► behind the Subcomponent you used for your query opens a Bugzilla bug report page prepared for your needs. (If you did not find an appropriate Sub component, click the "for all other ..." link! Then please
- Select your LibreOffice version from Picker
- Select your Operating System from Picker
- Write your bug report mentioning the Bug Report and also BugReport_Details.
- Decide what Severity might be appropriate for your report. Leave it where it is if you do not have much experience, the bug will not become fixed more quick if you select blocker.
- Click Submit, and your report will be added to the Bugzilla database
Additional Hints
- If that Bugzilla bug tracking system seems daunting to you with all its selections and rules, you should post your problem in an users@global.libreoffice.org mailing list or libreofficeforum.org; you will get help there. Or, of course, try the Assistant.
Reporting Ubuntu bugs
To file an Ubuntu-specific bug, first check the current list of issues, then:
- If you're using Ubuntu 10.04 or Ubuntu 10.10 LibreOffice is unsupported. File the bug upstream at LibreOffice or update to Natty or later.
- If you're using Ubuntu 11.04 or later, open a terminal window (under Applications > Accessories > Terminal) and type ubuntu-bug libreoffice[Enter], then follow the prompts to complete the report. Alternatively use this form.
Remember to include details such as how you installed LibreOffice, what platform you use (32-bit or 64-bit) and steps to reproduce the problem.
Filing a bug report at FreeDesktop.org as described above is also useful as such "upstream reports" can then be checked (and possibly tested and fixed) for other LibreOffice versions. Please file bugs at freedesktop.org, if it is not a Ubuntu-specific bug.
Detailed explanation of bug reports content
The following information help us to reproduce or locate the problem and thus the fix might be available earlier for you:
- If you do not have much experience in bug reporting, please read the bug writing guidelines, you will find a link at the top of the Enter Bug page!
- Use Correct selection for Component, Version, Initial Status and Severity, please mind hints on BugReport Details.
- Additionally to pulldown selections details concerning system version and architecture, e.g. openSUSE 11.2 on x86_64, 32-bit Windows 7
- for Linux, what desktop, e.g. KDE or GNOME
- LibreOffice version, e.g. 3.2.0. Get it from the the dialog "Help/About LibreOffice". If using a pre-built LibreOffice, on Linux tell the exact versions of LibreOffice packages in your package management system. For Windows, the exact file name of the installer, and from where downloaded.
- Additionally information concerning installed and used localization (UI language, document language) might be useful
- whether a 32-bit LibreOffice is used on a 64 bit (Linux) system
- the package source if it's not the official LibreOffice build
- Please contribute a meaningful Summary for the problem you want to report. A very bad example would be "LibreOffice WRITER 3.4.5 Problem". Nearby all Bug reports are concerning a "Problem", Product Libereoffice, Version "3.4.5" and Component "Writer" are already known from the selectors, so that example would not contain any useful information. A useful Summary looks like "UI FILESAVE: no progress bar" using the pseudo key words from BugReport Details. Additional examples:
- Not: "UI broken"
- But: Menu 'File -> Save as' not available (greyed out)
- Avoid short forms like "doesn't" or "isn't" to ease queries for strings in the Summary.
- Steps to reproduce the problem, please mention that every little detail might be important. Describe 1 simple way how to reproduce your problem in a step by step instruction; numbered items will ease to reference to your observations for other users. Be very exact,
- do not write: "Open document"
- but: "In new empty LibO Spreadsheet document, use menu 'File -> Open (LibO dialog) - file type "Text documents" -> select attached sample document -> double click'
- Provide an exact description of your problem
- Not: "Formatting not correct"
- But like: "I expect xxx because of yyy, but I see zzz
- Other useful details (e.g. screenshots, sample documents, backtrace, strace). Please mention that your sample document might not show your problem if some other user opens it because he uses a different operating system, has other settings for LibO or something else. So a screenshot can help. Often a screenshot is more useful if you edit it (with DRAW) adding comments and marking relevant areas.
- Reference to an existing Openoffice.org bug might be useful. Please mention: Active OOo Bugzilla has moved to Apache OOo Bugzilla
- Attachments (sample documents, ...)
- If you want to attach more than one screenshot you should collect them all in 1 document (copy / paste to a DRAW document) and attach as a PDF. Please add a short comment to each screenshot to tell what you want to demonstrate with it.
- If you want to attach more than 1 document (a complete test kit, for example) you should create a .zip file containing all documents and attach that .zip.
- If your attachment is too big to be attached in Bugzilla (bigger than 1 MB) you can use the experimental upload page.
Note: if you create screenshots, it helps the developers if you switch the user interface to English first. You can do so in Tools -> Options -> Language Settings -> Languages.
Providing extra information for the developers
How to get backtrace (on WINDOWS)
Here you find a screencast vido explaining how to get crash information for developers. That needs a lot of preparation, but for crashes what can't be reproduced easily that's the only chance to get required information for developers. Please do NOT copy the text you get to the comment, but attach a text document. That keeps the Bug readable and prevents from getting unusable results in Bugzilla queries.
How to get backtrace (on Linux)
The backtrace is useful when the application crashes or freezes. You might use the following steps:
- Install the libreoffice*-debuginfo packages, if available. If you do not have them, the backtrace is less useful, but still could potentially provide at least some information.
- Start the debugger with the real binary and log the output:
cd /opt/libreoffice/program
gdb ./soffice.bin 2>&1 | tee /tmp/gdb.log
- Inside the debugger, start the application:
run
Should you need to specify options to the LibreOffice command line, userun <options>, like eg.run -writer, orrun /path/to/document.odt - Do the steps to reproduce the application crash or freeze. If the freeze is the case, you need to press CTRL-C in gdb to get the gdb commandline back.
- Produce the backtrace:
backtrace full
- Produce backtrace of all threads:
thread apply all bt
- Quit the debugger
quit
- Attach the whole gdb.log to the bug report.
How to get strace log (on Linux)
In most cases, it is enough to start the application the following way:
strace -o /tmp/strace.log -f -tt -s 512 libreoffice
Then please do the steps to reproduce the problem and quit the application. The command libreoffice might be replaced with /opt/libreoffice/program/soffice specifically when you don't have the desktop integration installed.
Please, compress the log before it is attached to the bug report:
bzip2 /tmp/strace.log
If the 32-bit LibreOffice is running on 64-bit system, you need to install the package strace-32bit and start the 32-bit binary directly:
cd /opt/libreoffice/program # (on Ubuntu/Debian: cd /usr/lib/libreoffice/program) strace32 -o /tmp/strace.log -f -tt -s 512 ./soffice.bin
How to get valgrind log (on Linux)
The valgrind log is useful when the application crashes or freezes and the backtrace is not enough. You might use the following steps:
- Install the libreoffice*-debuginfo packages. (if available, and/or from your linux distribution)
- Start the debugger with the real binary and log the output:
cd /opt/libreoffice/program
valgrind --tool=memcheck --num-callers=50 --trace-children=yes ./soffice.bin 2>&1 | tee /tmp/valgrind.log
- Do the steps to reproduce the application crash or freeze. Note that it usually works fine with valgrind because it helps to keep the memory clean. Anyway, it should detect the danger and put some useful information to the log. Note that valgrind prints many warnings all the time. You really need to do the problematic steps to put the important data into the log.
- Quit LibreOffice
- Please, compress the valgring.log if it is bigger that 10kB
bzip2 /tmp/valgrind.log
- Attach the log into to the bug report.