If you follow fedora-test-list, you may have seen recent discussion around improving the Category:Debugging wiki pages. Several contributors have already created really helpful pages intended to guide testers who uncover defects and improve the quality of new bug reports. Great examples include:
- https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Xorg/Debugging – thanks François
- https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Dracut/Debugging – thanks Jóhann
I thought this might be a good opportunity to get involved with the QA team. If you’re interested in helping improve the quality of bug reports, please read on …
Top reported components
First, Christopher Beland highlighted several high defect components that are missing Debugging guides. This includes components like yum, rpm, openoffice.org and evolution. If you’re interested in a challenge, helping others self-diagnose failures will go a long way, and I’m sure the maintainers will be pleased.
Your favorite application
Alternatively, if there is an application you use and know really well? If you’ve had to spend time learning the in’s and out’s of this application, I bet others will need to do the same thing. I encourage you to share your knowledge and create a new debugging page.
Getting started
Once you’ve selected the application … use the steps below as a guide:
- Check if a debugging guide exists for your application already (look here)
- Login to the wiki and create new page … https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Bug_info_myfavoritepackage
- Is there an upstream debugging guide? If so, add a link …
- Is there a list of common issues to check against first?
- Should any files or output logs be attached to the bug report? For example, if reporting a bug against pulseaudio, you would need to attach: pulseaudio -vvvvv
- Be sure to include your page in the Debugging category by including the text: [[Category:Debugging]].
- Finally, let us know what you’ve created … join a QA meeting or send a message to fedora-test-list.
That wasn’t too bad was it? Thanks for helping!
jlaska 