Report bugs & Submit patches

Microprobe is a framework that has been used internally at IBM for some years and it has established a reputation for systematizing code generation tasks. During these initial years, the developers of Microprobe were the only users of it and consequently, any deficiency found in the software was fixed right away. Lately, Microprobe main effort has been to enable other users to use the framework by improving the documentation and the interfaces provided. This is a time-consuming taks after so many years of research-like code development. Meanwhile, we –the developers– would like to know of any deficiencies you find in Microprobe. Don’t be shy and report anyting you consider that will improve the framework!

Documentation bugs

If you find a bug in this documentation (typos, …) or would like to propose an improvement (some explanation is not clear, …), please open a bug issue in the Microprobe repository (see instructions below). If you have a suggestion how to fix it, include that as well.

Using GitHub to report a bug

Bug reports for Microprobe itself should be submitted via the Microprobe GitHub . GitHub offers issue support which allows the user to enter information and share it to the developers.

The first step in filing a report is to determine whether the problem has already been reported. The advantage in doing so, aside from saving the developers time, is that you learn what has been done to fix it; it may be that the problem has already been fixed for the next release, or additional information is needed (in which case you are welcome to provide it if you can!). To do this, search first for existing issues.

If the problem you’re reporting is not already reported, create a new issue at https://github.com/IBM/microprobe/issues.

To create a new issue, just go to the Issues section and click the New issue button. The new issue form has various fields. For the “Title” field, enter a very short description of the problem; less than ten words is good.

In the “Rich text” field, describe the problem in detail, including what you expected to happen and what did happen. Be sure to include whether any extension modules were involved, and what hardware and software platform you were using (including version information as appropriate) if you think the problem is related to that.

Attach any necessary files to be able to reproduce the problem if needed. If you found the solution for the problem you can attach the patch in this section as well. See the section Submit patches to check how to create patch files.

In the ‘labels’ section on the right, select the ones that apply to the current issue. You can also add any label as you wish to describe better the problem.

Each bug report will be reviewed by a developer who will determine what needs to be done to correct the problem. You will receive an update each time action is taken on the bug.

See also

  • How to Report Bugs Effectively

    Article which goes into some detail about how to create a useful bug report. This describes what kind of information is useful and why it is useful.

  • Bug Writing Guidelines

    Information about writing a good bug report. Some of this is specific to the Mozilla project, but describes general good practices.

Submit patches

Note

Only use this method to submit patches if you are in a PIP-based installation. If you are in a development installation (direct installation from GitHub), you just need to follow the standard workflow procedures in GIT. The procedure is the following:

  1. Do code modifications and commit changes on your personal copy of the repository

  2. Create a pull request to master branch

Check the Development Corner section for further details.

Since Microprobe is written in python and all target description files are text based YAML files, the source code of the framework is available in the framework installation directory. This enables users to inspect the code and implement modifications directly, without requiring further installation or compilation steps. That is, if you want a feature or you detected an issue, you can edit the source and start fixing/developing it right away!

Before making any edit to the files, you should do a copy of the file you are going to modify so that you can generate a patch lately. After creating a backup copy of the original, you can start to edit and test your code. Once you are comfortable with it, generate a patch using the following command:

> diff -Naur file new_file  > file.patch

This will generate a file.patch file that you can attach to a GitHub issue.

Warning

Do not update your the installation without saving first the modified files. Otherwise, you will lose the modifications.