speech-dispatcher: Reporting Bugs
7 Reporting Bugs
****************
If you believe you found a bug in Speech Dispatcher, we will be very
grateful if you let us know about it. Please do it by email on the
address <speechd@bugs.freebsoft.org>, but please don't send us messages
larger than half a megabyte unless we ask you.
To report a bug in a way that is useful for the developers is not as
easy as it may seem. Here are some hints that you should follow in
order to give us the best information so that we can find and fix the
bug easily.
First of all, please try to describe the problem as exactly as you
can. We prefer raw data over speculations about where the problem may
lie. Please try to explain in what situation the bug happens. Even if
it's a general bug that happens in many situations, please try to
describe at least one case in as much detail, as possible.
Also, please specify the versions of programs that you use when the
bug happens. This is not only Speech Dispatcher, but also the client
application you use (speechd-el, say, etc.) and the synthesizer name
and version.
If you can reproduce the bug, please send us the log file also. This
is very useful, because otherwise, we may not be able to reproduce the
bug with our configuration and program versions that differ from yours.
Configuration must be set to logging priority at least 4, but best 5, so
that it's useful for debugging purposes. You can do so in
'etc/speech-dispatcher/speechd.conf' by modifying the variable
'LogLevel'. Also, you may want to modify the log destination with
variable 'LogFile'. After modifying these options, please restart
Speech Dispatcher and repeat the situation in which the bug happens.
After it happened, please take the log and attach it to the bug report,
preferably compressed using 'gzip'. But note, that when logging with
level 5, all the data that come from Speech Dispatcher is also recorded,
so make sure there is no sensitive information when you are reproducing
the bug. Please make sure you switch back to priority 3 or lower
logging, because priority 4 or 5 produces really huge logs.
If you are a programmer and you find a bug that is reproducible in
SSIP, you can send us the sequence of SSIP commands that lead to the bug
(preferably from starting the connection). You can also try to
reproduce the bug in a simple test-script under
'speech-dispatcher/src/tests' in the source tree. Please check
'speech-dispatcher/src/tests/README' and see the other tests scripts
there for an example.
When the bug is a SEGMENTATION FAULT, a backtrace from gdb is also
valuable, but if you are not familiar with gdb, don't bother with that,
we may ask you to do it later.
Finally, you may also send us a guess of what you think happens in
Speech Dispatcher that causes the bug, but this is usually not very
helpful. If you are able to provide additional technical information
instead, please do so.
Info Catalog
speech-dispatcher: Download and Contact
speech-dispatcher: Top
speech-dispatcher: How You Can Help