8.2 Triaging bugs

Emails to you personally

Sometimes a confused user will send a bug report (or an update to a report) to you personally. If that happens, please forward such emails to the bug-lilypond list.

Emails to bug-answers

Some of these emails will be comments on issues that you added to the tracker.

Some of these emails will be discussions about Bug Squad work; read those.

Emails to bug-current

Dealing with these emails is your main task. Your job is to get rid of these emails in the first method which is applicable:

  1. If the email has already been handled by a Bug Squad member (i.e. check to see who else has replied to it), delete it.
  2. If the email is a question about how to use LilyPond, reply with this response:
    For questions about how to use LilyPond, please read our
    documentation available from:
      https://lilypond.org/manuals.html
    or ask the lilypond-user mailing list.
    
  3. If the email mentions “the latest git”, or any version number that has not yet been officially released, forward it to lilypond-devel.
  4. If a bug report is not in the form of a Tiny example, direct the user to resubmit the report with this response:
    I'm sorry, but due to our limited resources for handling bugs, we
    can only accept reports in the form of Tiny examples.  Please see
    step 2 in our bug reporting guidelines:
      https://lilypond.org/bug-reports.html
    
  5. If anything is unclear, ask the user for more information.

    How does the graphical output differ from what the user expected? What version of lilypond was used (if not given) and operating system (if this is a suspected cause of the problem)? In short, if you cannot understand what the problem is, ask the user to explain more. It is the user’s responsibility to explain the problem, not your responsibility to understand it.

  6. If the behavior is expected, the user should be told to read the documentation:
    I believe that this is the expected behavior -- please read our
    documentation about this topic.  If you think that it really is a
    mistake, please explain in more detail.  If you think that the
    docs are unclear, please suggest an improvement as described by
    “Simple tasks -- Documentation” on:
      https://lilypond.org/help-us.html
    
  7. If the issue already exists in the tracker, send an email to that effect:
    This issue has already been reported; you can follow the
    discussion and be notified about fixes here:
    

    (copy+paste the GitLab issue URL)

  8. Accept the report as described in Adding issues to the tracker.

All emails should be CC’d to the bug-lilypond list so that other Bug Squad members know that you have processed the email.

Note: There is no option for “ignore the bug report” – if you cannot find a reason to reject the report, you must accept it.


LilyPond Contributor’s Guide v2.25.14 (development-branch).