Bugs Tracker Help

Name:	Bugs Tracker
Version:	1.1
Last update:	2019-02-18 17:52:08

The AlphaCocoa project is hosted by SourceForge and uses the tracking system installed on this platform at the following address: Alpha's Bug Tracker.
The Bugs Tracker package in Alpha's library provides basic support for communicating with the tracker system. It installs a submenu called Bug Reports in the Help menu. This package is always on so there is no need to activate it explicitely.
See the Bug Reporting and Debugging Help files for advice on how to write bug reports and advice on debugging.

What is the Bugs Tracker?

The Bugs Tracker is an on-line database of all of the bugs or requests that have been reported for various Alpha products. It is part of the development platform provided by SourceForge.
Bug reports, requests for enhancement and requests for a task are all referred to as tickets. All the tickets are identified by a unique number. You can find a complete documentation about the tickets system on the following page: Tickets Overview.

Tracker Registration

The Bugs Tracker system is hosted by SourceForge (as well as the entire Alpha project).
Bugs can be read by anyone, but the web-based tracker interactions require that you be a registered user at SourceForge. If you do not have an account at SourceForge, you can easily get one: go to the SourceForge Registration page.

The Bug Reports menu

Inside Alpha's Help menu, you can find a submenu named Bug Reports. It contains items which give you a quick and easy access to the Web pages of the Bugs Tracker.
The Help ↣ Bug Reports ↣ Create New Ticket… menu item will open a window in your favorite browser in which you can type your report.
When you create a new ticket to report an issue, it is helpful to provide information about the configuration of your system and of your Alpha application. The Help ↣ Bug Reports ↣ Display Version Info menu item collects and displays all the necessary details in a separate window in Alpha so that you just have to copy and paste this information at the end of your bug report.
Once again, you must be logged in at SourceForge to create a new ticket. If it is not the case, you'll find a link in the page displayed by your browser to log in (see the Tracker Registration section).
You must enter a title for the ticket in the Create Ticket field. Then you should give a detailed description of the bug or the request in the description field. You may use Markdown Formatting in this field.
You should also set appropriately the popup menus displayed under the description field:

the Type popup menu is used to specify if the ticket is a bug report, a request for enhancement or a request for a task to perform.
the Priority popup menu sets the importance of the ticket with respect to the development cycle.
the Component popup menu lets you specify which part of Alpha is concerned by the ticket. You may leave it empty.
the Milestone popup menu, if present, lets you specify a target milestone for the project. You may leave it to its default value.
the Owner popup menu lets you specify which developer is most concerned with this report. You may leave it empty.

Before filing a bug report, please consult the Bug Reporting and Debugging Help files. These files are also accessible directly from the Bugs Report menu.
Bugs are fixed as soon as possible -- how long it takes may depend on the precision of the report. Some bugs that have an obvious solution will be fixed on the same day that they are reported. Others, which cannot be easily replicated or require a more thorough examination to discover the underlying cause of the problem, might retain a open or pending status for quite a while. Some bugs have been waiting years for a proper fix -- but so long as they are properly entered into the database, they are never truly forgotten.

Viewing existing tickets

The Help ↣ Bug Reports ↣ View A Ticket… menu item lets you access any already existing ticket. You just have to specify the number of the ticket you want to open.
The Help ↣ Bug Reports ↣ View Active Tickets menu item displays in your browser a list of all the currently opened tickets.
Similarly, the Help ↣ Bug Reports ↣ View Closed Tickets menu item displays a list of all the currently closed tickets.
To simply read already existing tickets, you do not have to be a registered SourceForge user. You can just go to the Bugs Tracker web page using the Help ↣ Bug Reports ↣ Go To Bugs Tracker menu item. If you want to edit a ticket and enter comments, the Edit button will be present only if you are logged in.

Source Code Browsing

The platform at SourceForge also provides facilities for browsing the Subversion repository where the source code of Alpha (both the core and the AlphaTcl library) is kept and developed. It is accessible at the following address: Subversion Repository Browser.