What to do about Boost bugs
- Make sure the bug isn't already fixed in the latest sources. The most
recent version of everything on the Boost web site is available from
the boost public CVS
repository.
- If you are a Boost user, or a Boost developer that doesn't have a CVS
write access:
- Submit a bug report to either
boost-users list,
boost mailing
list, or our bug
tracking facility at SourceForge; submitting it to either of the mailing
lists is a preferred way - because many of the Boost developers read the
lists on a daily basis, this way you are likely to get a quicker response,
and the discussions that often arise there from (possible) bug reports are
quite interesting and educational as well;
- If you have a proposed patch to the code, post it along with your bug
report, preferably in the context diffs format (
diff -c
);
if you can, send a patch relative to the current CVS state. A canonical
example of creating a patch file follows (let's assume that you've found
a bug in the file intentional_bug.hpp
:
- Download the latest version of
intentional_bug.hpp
from CVS.
- Make sure that the bug is still present in the code.
- Copy the file
intentional_bug.hpp
to a file called intentional_bug.hpp.orig
.
- Apply your changes to
intentional_bug.hpp
.
- Run "
diff -c intentional_bug.hpp.orig intentional_bug.hpp > intentional_bug.hpp.patch
" from the command prompt.
- Submit the patch file together with an explanation of the bug
and the proposed fix; and don't forget to include the word patch or bug
in the subject if you're submitting to the boost mailing list.
- If you are a Boost developer, and you have a CVS write access:
- If the bug is trivial (e.g. misspelled name, missed
typename
,
etc.), and you are willing to make a fix, either make your changes locally
and contact the library author(s)/maintainer(s) about it, or go ahead and
check the fix into CVS, but post a notification about it to the
boost mailing
list (if the author is not very active on the list, you also might want
to consider cc
'ing him as well);
- If the bug is non-trivial, and/or you don't have the time and resources to fix it,
submit a bug report (see p. 2 above); chances are that the maintainer(s)
will respond promptly and take care of the problem;
- Otherwise, create a temporary branch in CVS, make your changes there, and
ask the library author(s)/maintainer(s) to review them; if they are ok with
the new code, either you or they can integrate the fixes into the main
trunk.
Revised 18 January, 2002
© Copyright Aleksey Gurtovoy
2002
Distributed under the Boost Software License, Version 1.0.
(See accompanying file LICENSE_1_0.txt or
copy at www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt)