Adding Features and Dealing with Bugs

Unfortunately no code is perfect, sometimes bugs will occur, or a feature is desired. When reporting bugs, being as thorough as possible, and including additional details makes a huge improvement. No one should feel discouraged in attempting to fix a bug or suggest a feature that might be missing.

Reporting a Bug

Bugs with a Pylons Project package should be reported to the individual issue tracker on GitHub. First, some general guidelines on reporting a bug.

1) Create a GitHub account

You will need to create a GitHub account account to report and correspond regarding the bug you are reporting.

2) Determine if your bug is really a bug

You should not file a bug if you are:

• Proposing features and ideas: you should follow the policy below on Proposing Features and Ideas.
• Requesting support: there are a variety of ways to request support, from the mailing list, Stackoverflow, or IRC at #pylons on FreeNode.

3) Make sure your bug hasn’t already been reported

Search through the appropriate Issue tracker on GitHub (see Issue Trackers below). If a bug like yours was found, check to see if you have new information that could be reported to help the developers fix it.

4) Collect information about the bug

To have the best chance of having a bug fixed, we need to be able to easily replicate the conditions that caused it. Most of the time this information will be from a Python traceback message, though some bugs might be in design, spelling, or other errors on the website/docs/code.

If the error is from a Python traceback (see a Python traceback), include it in the bug report being filed. We will also need to know what platform you’re running (Windows, OSX, Linux), and which Python interpreter you’re running if its not CPython (e.g. Jython, Google App Engine).

5) Submit the bug

By default GitHub will email you to let you know when new comments have been made on your bug. In the event you’ve turned this feature off, you should check back on occasion to ensure you don’t miss any questions a developer trying to fix the bug might ask.

Issue Trackers

Bugs are reported and tracked on GitHub‘s issue trackers. Each Pylons Project has their own:

• pyramid issue tracker
• pyramid_beaker issue tracker
• pyramid_xmlrpc issue tracker
• pyramid_jinja2 issue tracker
• Pylons Project issue tracker (All bugs with the pylonshq.com/pylonsproject.org website should be reported here.)

Working on Code

To fix bugs or add features to a package managed by the Pylons project, an account on GitHub is required. All Pylons Project packages are under the Pylons organization on github.

The general practice for contributing new features and bug fixes is to fork the package in question and make changes there. Then send a pull request. This allows the developers to review the patches and accept them, or comment on what needs to be addressed before the change sets can be accepted.

Proposing Features and Ideas

When proposing an idea that isn’t just a fix or a plain bug report, the best place to do so is on the Pylons-Devel maillist . Another reasonable venue is IRC at #pylons on FreeNode.