Reporting Cygwin Problems

Reporting Cygwin Problems Cygwin Get that Linux feeling - on Windows Reporting Problems Problems?Problems?Impossible! Well, maybe not...We'd like to hear what you've uncovered but it'sin your best interests to do some initial research. First, you need to verify that your potential problem hasn't already beenreported by reading the Cygwin FAQ and the mailing list archives.If yourissue is still unresolved, feel free to write to the cygwin list withyour problem. Before you start asking questions please take a moment to read andunderstand some very good general advice on how to ask smartquestions.Once you've followed that link and read the advice,please demonstrate that you've actually gained some smartnessby not sending your Cygwin question to the authors at the link.Thatwould be a really stupidthing to do. For Cygwin advice please come back here. It is not always easy to figure out when you have a user problem andwhen you've found a valid Cygwin bug.If you have tracked things downas far as verifying to yourself that you've found a bug, please considerinvestigating it yourself and sending us patches if you figure out asolution.Bug reports without solutions are also ok, of course,although if you really want a bug fixed you can exercise thepower implicit in free software and provide the patch yourself.

Otherwise, if you can't determine if you've discovered a bug or just arehaving problems that require help, send a detailed description(with a test case if possible) to the appropriate mailing list after reading all of problem reportingguidelines on this page.Due to the mailing list volume, we don'talways reply to individual reports sent to the list but we do keep trackof them. Shouldn't I just send email to straight to a Cygwin developer or package maintainer? Isn't personal email more efficient than using a mailing list? or I don't want to bother the list with my problem. or I'm not really sure if this is a real problem and want to find out before I bother the list. Using the correct Cygwin mailing list is absolutely the proper wayto report problems or make observations.The mailing lists were created for this expresspurpose.Reporting problems to a public forum means that the workloadis shared and, since your report will be read by many people, it mayget more attention than one person would be able to provide. So, there is generally no need to "Cc" a package maintainer with yourobservations.All maintainers should be reading the appropriate mailing listso Ccing them will result in sending them two copies of your email.

This is particularly true if you notice that someone hasspecifically set the Reply-To of a message to go onlyto the cygwin mailing list.Some contributors even take this a stepfurther and actually set their return address tothe mailing list in an attempt to make it very obvious thatCygwin-related email should go to the mailing list. Nevertheless, some people still seem to insist on either Cc'ingCygwin contributors or sending private email.This is inconsiderate.Please do not do this unless specifically requested.

Reporting guidelines Use a subject line that describes the issue well:

Good examples: "1.7.10: possible Cygwin DLL select bug (W7 and XP)" "problem with open() in perl 5.14.1-2" "question about cat'ing binary files in bash"Bad examples: "question?" "bug" "porting problem" "help!!!!" "bash question"

"newbie needs help" "Question for Jane Simmons" "make" "gcc" "grep" (basically any single word subject)This also applies to general non-problem-related discussion.It's very hard to followthe list when most of the subject lines look very similar. When reporting problems, describe the problem rather thanjust including your interpretation of the problem. Bad example: "Cygwin's setup.exe fails to operate when the humidity is high. How can I solve Cygwin's problem with high humidity?"Good example: "I'm noticing this summer, that whenever I try to install Cygwin, setup.exe dies with a fatal exception at NNNNNN.Could this be a problem with humidity?"Run cygcheck -s -v -r > cygcheck.out and include that file asan attachment in your report.Please do not compress orotherwise encode the output.Just attach it as a straight text file sothat it can be easily viewed. Note: It is ok to redact sensitive information like username and to removesite-specific environment variables but please note that fact in your email messageso that we'll know that the cygcheck output has been modified. Similarly, if your problem involves the Cygwin/X server, include the file/var/log/xwin/XWin.0.log in addition to your cygcheck output as plain-text attachments in your report.Please note that Cygwin/X has its own mailing list. Do not assume that your problem is so trivial or so"well known" that it does not require any details or background fromyou.Many (most?) people who report problems fall into the trap ofassuming that people are "clued into" their mental state when, in mostcases, this is not the case.

As a rule of thumb, if you find yourself referring to your problem asthe problem with XYZ rather than a problemwith XYZ then your message is suspect.Using the inthis context means that you are assuming that your problem is well known.Unless you can point to an email message thread or FAQ entry (either of whichis a good idea, btw) please do not assume that the readers of your message willbe familiar with your problem.

If you are experiencing problems with a package which is not part ofthe Cygwin distribution first see

if there is abetter forum available for discussing it.Don't expect that justbecause you are having problems with a package on Cygwin thatthere is a problem with Cygwin.If you truly think that thisis a generic problem with Cygwin, then explain what the packageis and where it came from rather than expecting people to "justknow". Try to confine your email to one problem per message.Do not reuseprevious subjects to report unrelated problems. Reply to the email in the thread that you started ratherthan creating a new message for each reply.If you just send a newmessage every time you want to offer something about your problem, youwill confuse people who want to help but are expecting the discussionto occur in the thread that you created. In your (detailed) description, show how to reproduce the problem.This means including a test case if at all possible. If you can't run cygcheck for some reason (and why shouldn't you beable to?cygcheck is just a standard windows program which does not usethe Cygwin dll), at the very least, explain why you can't usecygcheck, include the Cygwin releaseyou are using, and give the operating system and its version number:e.g."Cygwin v1.7.8 under Windows 7". Avoid the use of exclamation marks or multiple question marks.Theyadd nothing to the report and provide the impression that you are tooexcited to think calmly about the problem. Avoid personal details about why you need the problem rectified,how important it is for you to have it fixed, or how long you've workedon it.People will be more likely to look at your email if itis cut and dry, to the point, and uses a minimum of extrawords. Avoid expressions of incredulity like "I can't believe that this is so broken!"or other editorializing. Minimize reporting that your problem "works fine" on some "other" UNIX platform orused to work ok in a previous Cygwin release.This is marginally useful data butit does not guarantee that you've uncovered a Cygwin problem.Cygwin can change its behavior between releases; sometimes to fix anoperational problem and sometimes, well... because we've introduced a bug. With regard to differing behavior from some flavor of UNIX:UNIXes vary in their behavior and Cygwin is basically a different flavor of UNIX.One common source of differing behavior is with programs which rely on specificmalloc behavior, like being able to free a pointer twice or being able toaccess memory after freeing.Cygwin is unforgiving about this kind of practicewhile some older linux versions of malloc are not. Note that, "It worked in a previous version of Cygwin" observations are onlyrelevant for modern versions of Cygwin.The "B series" versions of Cygwin(B17, B18, B19, B20) are not modern versions.Save your fingers and don'teven bother with comments about your experiences with these versions. Many people seem to latch onto the fact that their issues do not seem tooccur in other versions of UNIX or Cygwin and mention this inall followup email when people attempt to help them with the problem.However, this information is usually only useful in the first messageand does not usually bear repeating. Keep in mind that there are over 1500 people on the mailing list.Tryto avoid "me too" responses or reporting problems that have already beenreported.It's hard enough keeping up with the volume as it is...Send a patch to fix the problem if you can. http://cygwin.com/problems.html