Submitting bug reports and suggesting new features are important tasks to help improve the quality and functionality of the software. By following the advice given on this page you can help to ensure that all relevant information is captured and entered into the issue tracking system in the correct way. This helps the project team and other contributors to take action in the shortest possible time.
You can browse the current issues and features that have been reported in our issue tracker JIRA. The software running the issue tracker has been provided to us – as an open source project – free of charge by Atlassian.
We recommend that you report possible bugs and feature requests to one of our mailing lists, and our dedicated support hat person will respond and enter the issue into JIRA if required.
Although you might register as a user of our issue tracker, you will by default not have permission to submit new bug reports, the main reason for this is that we received too many spam “reports” and comments, but we might review this policy at a later stage.
Taverna JIRA bug and feature tracking:
http://www.mygrid.org.uk/dev/issues/
myGrid uses JIRA to manage the bugs that we confirmed as being official bugs, as well as other issues and feature requests that we are working on.
Although there is no reason why we can not open a JIRA account for genuine bug reporters, we currently feel that it is better to submit bugs and comments to one of our mailing lists, taverna-users or taverna-hackers (depending on the level of technical complexity).
This way other users can track the activity, and our dedicated maintener person of the week will pick up on the case and see if it should is appropriate to be entered into JIRA or not, and also ensure that any additional details are provided.
Contributing code
If you want to help out and contribute some code then the best place to start is by looking at the issue tracking system to find a task that is unassigned or needs completing. You can then send an email to the Project Lead or post a message on the Taverna Hackers List with a reference to the task, stating that you would like to own it. If there is an area where you want to make a contribution but there are no relevant tasks then use the Taverna Hackers List to post a message asking for one to be created.
Before we can accept any contributions of code you need to have signed a Contributors’ Licence Agreement (CLA). This sets out the terms and conditions under which the software you wish to contribute is to be used within the Taverna project. Two agreements are available to choose from depending on whether you represent an individual or a corporate contributor.
Submitting new bug reports
Before submitting a new bug, please search our issue tracker to check the bug hasn’t already been reported. If it has, then you can add a comment or vote – though you will need to be registered with JIRA to do so.
When you do submit a bug report, please include the following information:
- The operating system you are using, e.g. RHEL 5, Windows XP, Solaris 10
- The JDK or JRE you are using, e.g. Sun Microsystems JDK 1.5.0_09
- As much of the stack trace (if there is one) as necessary to show the cause of the problem
- A list of steps to reproduce the bug
- Name of the software, component or plugin that the bug report refers to
- The version of the software that the bug report refers to
- Details of the plugins that have been installed
The objective is to give enough information for someone with no prior knowledge of the bug to recreate the problem for themselves. Too little information may prevent them understanding when the bug occurs and too much information can create unnecessary confusion.
Submitting new feature requests
When submitting a request for a new feature make sure to keep it as brief and to the point as possible. Each new feature requires its own issue in the issue tracking system so that they can be addressed separately by developers. It is up to the Project Lead to determine when new features are added, according to the development plans they have made. You may point out reasons why features should be added sooner rather than later, such as the ability to compete with an alternative product, but unless you are willing to do the work yourself you may have to wait for development to take place.
