How to contribute

Source: linuxconf 2015

What makes a bad bug report??

• Emailing the user mailing list
• Emailing the maintainers directly
• Emailing the wrong people (e.g. of a different project)
• “It doesn’t work”
• Rage tweet
• No follow-up (when you find the root cause / solution, or realize it was all your fault)

What makes a good bug report?

• Use the bug tracker where there is one
• Look for duplicates
• Look for instructions about filling bugs (should you use tags? run special commands?)
• Three parts:
  • when I do ____
  • I’m expecting ____ to happen
  • But instead, I’m seeing _

Include relevant versions and logs

Note: yes, ‘relevant’ is subjective and therefore hard

• Google way

• Thoughtbot way