Reporting bugs



May I suggest that everyone who finds bugs enter them directly into the
bug database at
https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=4933&atid=104933?  This should
be a better way of tracking them than reporting them to this mailing
list.  If of course you'd like to discuss some issue, then mailing to
the list is useful.

A basic bug report includes enough information to reproduce the problem.

A fuller, better better bug report includes:

  -- A good title summarizing the problem.

  -- A clear procedure for reproducing the problem.  Please verify that
your procedure actually re-creates the problem in a fresh Maxima.  If
you can't reproduce it, still file it, but try to include as much
information about what you did before.  The simpler and shorter the
procedure, the better.  It's always appreciated when the discoverer of a
bug narrows it down to a simple case.  Differentials are always good,
too -- that is, cases which are almost the same but DO work.

  -- If it's not completely obvious, an explanation of why this is the
wrong answer and what the right answer is.

  -- The exact version number you're running under, ideally including
the Lisp and OS versions and processor type (does the current RC list
those in the banner?  have we added a maxima_version function or
variable with this information?).

  -- A brief statement of why it's important to solve this problem (to
help prioritize maintenance work), e.g. "almost every user will run into
this insidious bug sooner or later and lose all his work" or "this bug
keeps my group from using Maxima, since this class of matrix is
ubiquitous in population genetics" or "the workaround is fine for now"
or "this is an artifically constructed case, and I'm pretty sure that it
will never affect an ordinary user" (though often bugs in complicated
cases turn out to show up in simple cases as well).

  -- If you have a work-around (a procedure for avoiding the problem) or
a patch (code to fix the problem), that's nice, but not essential.  If
you have a patch, I suggest you put FIX in the title of the bug report
so that maintainers can incorporate it quickly.

  -- Some problems may not be bugs, but functional limitations.  In this
case, it's interesting to know what other systems do, notably commercial
Macsyma.  If you know why this limitation might be there, say so
("Kratov theory says that this  problem is intractable in general").
Also interesting if you know an algorithm for handling them e.g. "the
ODE package doesn't handle the seventh-order triexponential case, but
muPad 29.23 does; I believe the modified Phuoc-Ma`fuz method as
implemented by Odibwa (J.Sym.Alg. 23:5:230) handles this correctly".
Even better, "...and I am implementing it for Maxima 6.0" :-) .

       -s