procps/Documentation/BUGS

BUG REPORTS

Please read this file before sending in a bug report or patch.

Also, PLEASE read the documentation first.  90% of the mail I get
complaining about procps-ng is due to the sender not having read the
documentation!


Where to send
=============
Send comments, bug reports, patches, etc., to procps@freelists.org


What to send
============
It is much more useful to me if a program really crashes to recompile it
with make "CFLAGS=-ggdb -O", run it with "gdb prog" and "run" and send
me a stack trace ('bt' command).  That said, any bug report is still
better than none.

strace and ltrace output are very helpful:

        strace -o output-file ps --blah
        bzip2 output-file

I also like "ps --info" output, even if there isn't a ps problem.

Patches
=======

Get latest version of the source from upstream git.

git clone git://gitorious.org/procps/procps.git

and use 'git format-patch' format. It is fine to attach patches as
compressed tar balls.  When you are about to send very large number
of patches consider setting up your personal clone, and send a pull
request.

git request-pull commit-id \
	git://gitorious.org/~yourlogin/procps/your-clone.git

Kernel-Dependent Patches
========================
If you send me patches which are specific to *running* with a particular
kernel version of /proc, please condition them with the runtime determined
variable 'linux_version_code' from libproc/version.c.  It is the same
number as the macro LINUX_VERSION_CODE for which the kernel /proc fs
code was compiled.

A macro is provide in libproc/version.h to construct the code from its
components, e.g.
  if (linux_version_code < LINUX_VERSION(2,5,41))
     /* blah blah blah */
A startup call to set_linux_version may also be necessary.

Of course, if a bug is due to a change in kernel file formats, it would
be best to first try to generalize the parsing, since the code is then
more resilient against future change.

Code Structure
==============

A goal is to encapsulate *all* parsing dependent on /proc
file formats into the libproc library.  If the API is general enough
it can hopefully stabilize and then /proc changes might only require
updating libproc.so.  Beyond that having the set of utilities be simple
command lines parsers and output formatters and encapsulating all kernel
divergence in libproc is the way to go.

Hence if you are submitting a new program or are fixing an old one, keep
in mind that adding files to libproc which encapsulate such things is
more desirable than patching the actual driver program.  (well, except
to move it toward the API of the library).