About This Document

This document, originally by UnderFlow, is licensed under the GNU General Public License.

Why Does Forge Use a Bug Tracker?

In the past, we used the forums to report bugs, but this had a couple of bad side effects. First, some of the topics grew quite large. Second, sometimes a bug would not get the attention of a developer, and would not be addressed.

The bug tracker, Mantis, provides a clean way to comment on bugs, it reduces the number of duplicated bug reports, and it makes it difficult for developers to ignore both new and old bug reports.

Tutorial

Where Do I Report the Bug?

If your bug is from a Beta release of Forge, you may post your error report to the same topic in which the Beta version was announced. You can find this topic in the Forge Forum. If you don't get a timely response, then you may wish to search and report the bug in Mantis as described below.

If you are using an alpha, git, or nightly build version of Forge, please use Mantis instead of posting to the forums. This is a relatively new procedure as of July 29th, 2011.

Start Off on the Right Foot

1. We highly recommend signing up for a Mantis account] early on. It makes participating in the bug reporting and feature requesting activities much easier.
2. Once you have a Mantis account, log in.

Search existing issues

1. Open the [View Issues page in Mantis].
2. Below the first, upper, gray and periwinkle table, on the left side, you should see a Search box. Type one or two key words for the bug you have found into that box. For example, if you think you found a bug involving Sphinx-Bone Wand, you may try "sphinx" "wand" or just "wand" (either with or without the quotes).
3. Click the Apply Filter button, which is either to the right of or just below the Search box.
4. After the page loads, you should see a second table titled Viewing Issues below the Search box.

No Matching Issues

1. If the second table shows Viewing Issues (0 - 0 / 0), your search did not match any open issues. Try searching with different key words, perhaps using words that describe the card, rather than the card itself. For Sphinx-Bone Wand, you might want to search for "charge" "counter".
2. If you still get no matching issues, then you should [[#File a New Bug Report|File a New Bug Report].

Read the Issues

1. Read through the summaries of the issues in the second table. If one of the summaries sounds like your bug, click its ID number in the fourth column to get more details.
2. If the issue turns out not to be the same, use the Back button in your web browser to read the other issues.
3. If no issues match, try using different words in the Search box as explained in the No Matching Issues section.
4. If you do find a matching issue, think about whether you can add any helpful information to it.

Add a Helpful Note

1. Scroll down to the Add Note table.
2. Enter your text into the box there. Try to describe the specific steps you took to produced or reproduce the error.

File a New Bug Report

1. If you could not find an existing issue that matches your problem, Report a new issue.
2. Choose the Category that you think best suits the issue. Do not use Auto Bug Report; that is reserved for bug reports that are not entered manually as you are doing now.
3. If you're able to reproduce the problem, check the value next to Reproducibility that best fits your efforts. If you have not tried to reproduce it, that is OK. If you are reporting a feature instead of an error, choose N/A.
4. If you are reporting a program crash that starts with "An error has occurred. You can copy/paste this message or save it to a file.", choose crash for Severity. Otherwise, choose the value that you think best fits.
5. Do not change Priority.
6. If you know your processor's type, place it next to Platform.
7. Enter the name of your OS next to Operating System. For example, "Windows Vista" (no quotes).
8. If you know the specific version of OS that you are running, place it next to OS Version. If not, leave it blank.
9. For Product Version,

1. Under "version", write the release date of the beta (e.g. "BETA 06/12/2011") or the revision you used to compile your Forge version if you use the SVN (e.g. "Revision 9875"; command: "./svn.exe info forge-svn").

If there are news regarding your issue, you will automatically be notified via your Googlemail address.