Support, bug reports and feature requests

Support, bug reports and feature requests

How to get timely support

Please inform us when you know you will need our help well in advance, preferably as soon as possible, e.g. when you write the project proposal.

General idea about bugs

We know they are bugs. The important question is “Where are the bugs that affect you ?”

First, the help

A help should be displayed by running the executable with the --help option.

Read it if there is one you can reasonably understand

You are kindly reminded to:

  1. read the constantly updated documentation
  2. check you are correctly using the executables

Otherwise report it

If:

  • no documentation is displayed
  • or the documentation is not understandable

then this is a bug that should be reported!

Then, the bug report or help request

The only reasonable way to report a bug is to give enough information to reproduce it. If you run an executable, it all boils down to this, in decreasing order of preference:

  1. if we share an access on the same machine
    1. email us
      1. the full command line
      2. with the directory where it was launched from
      3. preferably also with the path of the file where the standard output and error have been redirected
      4. and with as little irrelevant information as possible
    2. and make sure we have read access to at least the input files and the standard output and error
  2. otherwise email us
    1. the full command line
    2. with, in decreasing order of preference:
      1. if they are not too big, the input files
      2. if they are too big and if it is possible to make a subset, a subset of the input files
      3. otherwise at least the last 50 lines of output.
    3. and with as little irrelevant information as possible.

Failure to do as above will almost always result in your report being deprioritised!

If you do not update your sources, you will also have to:

  • give us the revision you are having a problem with
  • and expect not to get any help for free if we find it is too old.

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