How to report bugs¶

Rules of thumb¶

This is the portal where us, developers, join forces to develop Chamilo and fix all bugs. It is very important that you report bugs properly, as this might greatly improve the speed at which we give you a solution and make the software more stable and reliable.

There are 4 rules to report a bug:

• give us details of your installation: in case it's a server problem, tell us more about your server (operating system, versions of MySQL, PHP, and web server). In case it's an interface problem, tell us about your browser and your operating system. In any case, please give us the version of Chamilo you are using.
• describe how you reproduce the bug. A bug that we cannot reproduce is a bug that we can't fix.
• take screenshots, including your url. The URL that your browser is showing when the bug occurs lets us know much better where the bug occurs, and speeds up detection and fixes. If you do not include the URL in your screenshot, at least write it in the bug report.
• be honest, respectful and patient. Most of us work on Chamilo for free or during our job for specific institutions or companies. If we spend time helping you, it is because we want to make sure Chamilo is a great piece of software. It doesn't mean we will hurry to rescue you because you "have to deliver tomorrow" or because "otherwise you'll use another software". This is why fixing some nasty bugs can take longer than expected. If you are in a hurry, contact one of the Chamilo Official Providers instead.

How to use this website¶

First of all, you will need an account on this website in order to register a bug. This is to avoid SPAM. We don't like SPAM, it makes us loose time that we could be spending improving the platform.
Create your account by clicking the "Register" link in the top-right corner of this page, then come back for further instructions.

As you are reading this, you will notice that a few tabs are available to you in this project. If you have a new bug to report, please go have a look into the "Issues" tab, and search (using the search box) for terms similar to what you want to report. If the report already exists, then add a comment to the existing report. Do not create a new one if not necessary.

If no similar report exists, then click the "New issue" tab. You will be presented with a form, composed of a title and a description. Please fill these in. The other fields are not necessary for you to fill. They are there for us developers.
Once you have entered a title and a description, add a screenshot or two and save your report. We will see it straight away (the project managers receive e-mails for every new task).

Reporting multiple (related) errors¶

When reporting a series of problem, please use the subtask feature: define one main task, then define other tasks that are elementary. For example:

• Task 123 is the main task, describing a series of problems in one single tool
• Task 124 is a sub-task, only giving one problem and how you think it could be fixed. You then come back to task 123 and say it has "Related issues" (there's a section just for that) and add "124" with the relation "blocks"
• Task 125 is another sub-task, only giving one problem and how you think it could be fixed. You then come back to task 123 and do the same about task "125".

It's more work to report, but the poor number of developers for such a huge project is forcing us to put a little more strain on the reporters, in order to make the work of developers easier. You will see that it all becomes clearer once the task is split into little atomic elements.

The difference is that you will take 30 minutes for the main task + 5 minutes per sub-task (in this case let's say 5 sub-tasks - so 55 minutes in total), while the consequent bug-fixing and communication will at least save a few hours (for example take 30min for each sub-task instead of 5 hours for the whole big bunch). Developers work better if they can focus on one single problem at a time.

This is all benefiting you, the reporter, in the end. You get your bug fixed faster and we can focus on great new features to bring you.

Following up¶

Once you have registered a new report or updated an existing report, you will automatically receive e-mails letting you know each time the report is modified, so don't worry, you'll know when we have resolved the bug.