Found bugs?

On this page we try to address what you can and should do if you find a package that is not compiling. Please also take a look at our Trouble shooting page!

When to file bugs

Please consider the following golden rule on filing bugs:
If you find a broken package and you (or someone else) can't fix it right away, then please file a bug using the New Ticket button.

Please do so, even if you think the error is trivial or that the error is on your side! This will help us to improve the packages and helps the next one having the same problem. The same applies if you find a package missing that you would like to see on the Freerunner. You should also read the section below on how to file bugs. This will speed up the time we need to find out what's wrong and how to fix it.

How to file bugs

Ok, you found a broken package and want to report this to us. To ease the bug hunting you should consider the following steps:

  1. Search if a similar bug report already exists. If this is the case, please append your findings to the already existsing ticket!
  2. If you are not yet registered, please do so using the register button. The registration will create an account necessary to report bugs.
  3. Login to Trac. After successfully login in, the New Ticket button will show up.
  4. Open a new ticket and add in the following data:
    • A short and descriptive summary. Consider the six word rule to describe the core of your problem. Don't forget to mention the ebuild (including version) that fails!
    • A description that enables others to reproduce and understand the problem. You might also paste in an error message if it is short. If you already started debugging the problem, please also append your findings. Please don't paste in emerge --info or similar, as this hurts readability.
    • The correct type and component of the problem you found.
    • Add the build.log, config.log or even a patch fixing the problem to the report. For new ebuilds, please attach the ebuild and the necessary patches.
  5. There are no fire-and-forget bug reports! So please test fixes, answer questions of developers and try to keep the bug report up-to-date.
  6. If the problem described in the ticket is resolved, close the report!

Debugging

If you are brave and want to help finding the root cause of the problem you can perform the following steps:

  1. Try to emerge the newest version of the package. If this package works, add the information to the reported ticket so we can unmask that version for everyone.
  2. Search the web for solutions to your problem. Good sources are other distributions like OpenEmbedded?. If you take a patch from other people, please add the source and credits to the patch!
  3. Problems often found, especially for cross-compilation, are wrong includes and library directives. Search the config.log for those entries. If you found such a line, you need to trace back the setting of the variable. Change the line you found (normally in autoconf/automake files) and try if this fixes the problem.
  4. Malformed pkg-config files are another cross-compile problem. Take a look at the .pc files in $ROOT/usr/lib/pkgconfig.

Don't forget to add your findings to the ticket you filed!