Reporting Bugs (deze pagina wordt zo snel mogelijk vertaald)

Bugs in Thunderbird are tracked using the Bugzilla database. With the increasing popularity of Thunderbird, lots of bad bug reports are being filed and many of the good ones are duplicates of already filed bugs. The purpose of this page is to help you file better bug reports, which in the end will help the developers fixing the bug.

Before filing a bug report

There are four crucial steps that you should follow before filing your first bug report:

Use the latest nightly build of Thunderbird with a new profile
Check if you can reproduce the bug in Mozilla (Application Suite)
Check if the bug is already filed
Finally, read the official Bug Writing Guidelines

1. Use the latest version of Thunderbird with a new profile

Make sure you are using the latest nightly build of Thunderbird. Always install it in an empty folder.

Create a new Thunderbird profile and then start Thunderbird using that profile. Now, try to reproduce the bug. Of course, if what you're about to file is not a bug, but an enhancement request (RFE), you can skip this step.

2. Check if you can reproduce the bug in Mozilla (Application Suite)

Since Thunderbird is based on the Mozilla codebase, many bugs in Thunderbird are actually bugs in Mozilla. The major difference between Thunderbird and Mozilla is the user interface (e.g. the toolbars, menus, status bar, etc., referred to as the "chrome" in Mozilla terms). This means that if you're experiencing a problem with the toolbar, it's probably a Thunderbird bug, but if you're having problems with web page rendering, connection failures or even printing, they're most likely Mozilla bugs.

Before even thinking of filing a bug report for Thunderbird, download the latest Mozilla nightly and try to reproduce the bug using a clean Mozilla profile. Get the latest nightly for Windows, Linux or Mac OS X. If the bug exists in Mozilla, you should of course still file a bug report, but do not file it as a Thunderbird bug!

3. Check if the bug is already filed

The list of previously filed bugs is constantly growing, but if you look in the appropriate category, you'll notice that the list isn't that long. The components in Thunderbird are:

The links above display a list of all bugs for that component (except the duplicates). If this is a new bug in the latest nightly build, you could always look in the list of bugs filed today. For the complete list of Thunderbird bugs, including duplicates, click here (will take a while to load).

4. Finally, read the official Bug Writing Guidelines

This last step only needs to be done once (hopefully), and is probably the most important one. You should never file a bug report before reading the official Bug Writing Guidelines, written by Gervase Markham. You will learn how to write a detailed and useful bug report, which will reduce the time it takes for a developer to fix the bug.

Filing a bug report

If you've followed the steps above, you are ready to file the bug report. Follow the instructions on the page. Since you've already searched for previously filed bugs, you can skip Step 1 - search for your bug.

Vertaald door ThunderbirdNL.