{(sk:page-preamble "Reporting a bug in Yenta" "icon-help" "Help")}

# The most useful way to report a bug

When you decide that there is a bug, it is important to report it and to report it in a way which is useful. What is most useful is an exact description of what commands you execute, starting with the start of your Yenta session, until the problem happens.

The most important principle in reporting a bug is to report facts, not hypotheses or categorizations. It is always easier to report the facts, but people seem to prefer to strain to posit explanations and report them instead. If the explanations are based on guesses about how Yenta is implemented, they will be useless; we will have to try to figure out what the facts must have been to lead to such speculations. Sometimes this is impossible. But in any case, it is unnecessary work for us.

For example, suppose you type, "This attestation is fairly long and I'm not sure if Yenta can cope with it," as one of your attestations, and Yenta responds, "Page not found." The best way to report the bug is with a sentence like the preceding one, because it gives all the facts and nothing but the facts.

Do not assume that the problem is due to the length of the attestation string and say, "When I define a long attestation, Yenta can't find UI pages." The problem is just as likely to be because there's an apostrophoe in the attestation. If so, when we get your report, we'll try out the problem with some otherlong attestion, probably without an apostrophe in it, and will not be able to find anything wrong. There's no way we could guess that it was the apostrophe.

Instead, tell us exactly which links you clicked on, and what you typed. Extra information might be useful, but please include at least the basics. If you can (or cannot) reproduce the bug, please tell us that, too.

[Bug reporting in general | Checklist for bug reports]

{(sk:page-postamble)}