Bug reports¶

SPARCK2 is an actively maintained project that we constantly strive to improve. With a project of this size and complexity, bugs may occur. If you think you have discovered a bug, you can help us by submitting an issue in our public issue tracker, following this guide.

Before creating an issue¶

The maintainers of this project are trying very hard to keep the number of open issues down by fixing bugs as fast as possible. By following this guide, you will know exactly what information we need to help you quickly.

But first, please do the following things before creating an issue.

Upgrade to latest version¶

Chances are that the bug you discovered was already fixed in a subsequent version. Thus, before reporting an issue, ensure that you're running the [latest version] of SPARCK2.

Search for solutions¶

Before you go through the trouble of creating a bug report that is answered and closed right away with a link to the relevant documentation section or another already reported or closed issue or discussion, you can save time for us and yourself by doing some research:

1. Search our documentation and look for the relevant sections that could be related to your problem. If found, make sure that you configured everything correctly.[^1]

2. Search our issue tracker, as another user might already have reported the same problem, and there might even be a known workaround or fix for it. Thus, no need to create a new issue.

3. Search our discussion board to learn if other users are struggling with similar problems and work together with our great community towards a solution. Many problems are solved here.

Keep track of all search terms and relevant links, you'll need them in the bug report.¹

At this point, when you still haven't found a solution to your problem, we encourage you to create an issue because it's now very likely that you stumbled over something we don't know yet. Read the following section to learn how to create a complete and helpful bug report.

Issue template¶

We have created a new issue template to make the bug reporting process as simple as possible and more efficient for our community and us. It is the result of our experience answering and fixing more than 1,600 issues (and counting) and consists of the following parts:

• Bug reports
• Before creating an issue
  • Upgrade to latest version
  • Search for solutions
• Issue template
  • Title
  • Context optional
  • Bug description
  • Related links
  • Reproduction
  • Steps to reproduce
  • Checklist

Title¶

A good title is short and descriptive. It should be a one-sentence executive summary of the issue, so the impact and severity of the bug you want to report can be inferred from the title.

Context optional¶

Before describing the bug, you can provide additional context for us to understand what you were trying to achieve. Explain the circumstances in which you're using SPARCK2, and what you think might be relevant. Don't write about the bug here.

Why this might be helpful: some errors only manifest in specific settings, environments or edge cases, for example, when your documentation contains thousands of documents.

Bug description¶

Now, to the bug you want to report. Provide a clear, focused, specific, and oncise summary of the bug you encountered. Explain why you think this is a bug that should be reported to SPARCK2, and not to one of its dependencies. Adhere to the following principles:

• Explain the what, not the how – don't explain [how to reproduce the bug][Steps to reproduce] here, we're getting there. Focus on articulating the problem and its impact as clearly as possible.

• Keep it short and concise – if the bug can be precisely explained in one or two sentences, perfect. Don't inflate it – maintainers and future users will be grateful for having to read less.

• One bug at a time – if you encounter several unrelated bugs, please create separate issues for them. Don't report them in the same issue, as this makes attribution difficult.

Stretch goal – if you found a workaround or a way to fix the bug, you can help other users temporarily mitigate the problem before we maintainers can fix the bug in our code base.

Why we need this: in order for us to understand the problem, we need a clear description of it and quantify its impact, which is essential for triage and prioritization.

Related links¶

Of course, prior to reporting a bug, you have read our documentation and [could not find a working solution][search for solutions]. Please share links to all sections of our documentation that might be relevant to the bug, as it helps us gradually improve it.

Additionally, since you have searched our issue tracker and discussion board before reporting an issue, and have possibly found several issues or discussions, include those as well. Every link to an issue or discussion creates a backlink, guiding us maintainers and other users in the future.

Stretch goal – if you also include the search terms you used when [searching for a solution][search for solutions] to your problem, you make it easier for us maintainers to improve the documentation.

Why we need this: related links help us better understand what you were trying to achieve and whether sections of our documentation need to be adjusted, extended, or overhauled.

Reproduction¶

A minimal reproduction is at the heart of every well-written bug report, as it allows us maintainers to instantly recreate the necessary conditions to inspect the bug to quickly find its root cause. It's a proven fact that issues with concise and small reproductions can be fixed much faster. If in dooubt, please read our guide on creating a reproduction first.

After you have created the reproduction, you should have a .zip file, ideally not larger than 1 MB. Just drag and drop the .zip file into this field, which will automatically upload it to GitHub.

Why we need this: if an issue contains no minimal reproduction or just a link to a repository with thousands of files, the maintainers would need to invest a lot of time into trying to recreate the right conditions to even inspect the bug, let alone fix it.

Steps to reproduce¶

At this point, you provided us with enough information to understand the bug and provided us with a reproduction that we could run and inspect. However, when we run your reproduction, it might not be immediately apparent how we can see the bug in action.

Thus, please list the specific steps we should follow when running your reproduction to observe the bug. Keep the steps short and concise, and make sure not to leave anything out. Use simple language as you would explain it to a five-year-old, and focus on continuity.

Why we need this: we must know how to navigate your reproduction in order to observe the bug, as some bugs only occur at certain viewports or in specific conditions.

Checklist¶

Thanks for following the guide and creating a high-quality and complete bug report – you are almost done. The checklist ensures that you have read this guide and have worked to your best knowledge to provide us with everything we need to know to help you.

We'll take it from here.