LibreOfficeBugWrangling

Revision 17 as of 2012-08-27 02:05:21

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Debugging Central

This page is part of the debugging series — pages with debugging details for a variety of Ubuntu packages.

How to File

  • Please do not report a LibreOffice bug without first reading this wiki article and performing all the relevant actions mentioned here. Failure to do so will delay your bug getting addressed as quickly as possible.

  • First, before filing a bug report, please make sure you install the full LibreOffice suite to avoid package split collatoral damage, by executing at a terminal:

sudo apt-get -y install libreoffice

  • Please file all your LibreOffice bugs by executing at the Terminal:
    ubuntu-bug <PACKAGE>

    where <PACKAGE> is the specific package you found the problem in. For example, if you have a document import issue with Writer:
    ubuntu-bug libreoffice-writer

Sample Bug Reporting Template

1) lsb_release -rd

2) apt-cache policy libreoffice-writer

3) What is expected to happen in Writer is <PRECISE, STEP-BY-STEP INSTRUCTIONS>.

4) What happened instead is...

I have the following extensions installed: lo-menubar, libreoffice-nlpsolver, ...

WORKAROUND: Perform the following steps:...

  • Please do not stack multiple issues into one bug.
  • Please do not complain about how long it takes to fix a bug, the severity of your bug is high so it should be fixed immediately, "I cannot believe it's not fixed...", etc. Especially, if you have not completed the relevant, below mentioned debugging procedures, let alone contributed code upstream. This type of behavior is unconstructive, irritating to others who read your E-Mail, and spammy. We all want to see every bug fixed as soon as possible! Naturally, bugs being fixed is limited to reproducibility and clarity of the bug report, the actual impact the bug has on the community, and available developer resources.

Debugging Procedure

Document Issues

Bug importing a non-MS Office document

  • If you are reporting about importing a non-MS Office document, please attach the document to the bug report before opening in LibreOffice or in any other program. As well, please post a screenshot of how it looks in LibreOffice with a specific description about how it should look.

Bug exporting to MS Office

  • If you are reporting about how a document looks different exporting to MS Office, please attach the document to the bug report immediately after saving via LibreOffice, but before opening in MS Office. As well, please post a screenshot of how it looks in LibreOffice and then how it shows in MS Office.

Bug Importing from MS Office

  • If you are reporting about how a document looks importing from MS Office, please save the file in MS Office, then before opening in any other program, attach the document to the bug report. As well, please post a screenshot of how it looks in LibreOffice and then how it shows in MS Office.

Bug Exporting to Adobe PDF

  • If you are reporting about how a document looks exporting to Adobe Reader, please attach the file to the bug report before and after exporting to PDF. As well, provide screenshots of how it looks in LibreOffice and Adobe Reader.

Bug Importing PDF

  • If you are reporting about how a PDF document looks importing into Draw, please attach the file to the bug report before importing into Draw. As well, provide screenshots of how it looks in LibreOffice and Adobe Reader.

Printing

Crashes

LibreOffice Crashes but System Still Functional

  • For instances when only LibreOffice crashes but you can still use the OS without hard rebooting, please report this via Apport and ensure you have all the LibreOffice debug symbols installed (libreoffice-dbg, uno-libs3-dbg, and ure-dbg). For more on this please see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Apport . As well, if this happened while a particular document was open or you were manipulating the document, please attach that document to the bug report with detailed, click-for-click steps on how to reproduce the crash.

  • In the rare instance that after you followed the above, apport did not kick in, please provide a backtrace, valgrind, and strace following https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingProgramCrash .

The Whole System Hangs or Boots to the Login Screen

  • For instances when you are using LibreOffice and either the system hangs requiring a hard reset or you are booted to the login screen, this is a bug in either xorg or the kernel. Please follow https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DebuggingSystemCrash . As well, if this happened while a particular document was open or you were manipulating the document, please attach that document to the bug report with detailed, click-for-click steps on how to reproduce the crash.

Troubleshooting Techniques

Try moving .libreoffice and ~/.config/libreoffice. If you installed any extensions, remove them and see if the problem is reproducible. Comment on the results of performing these techniques in your report. Please keep these directories around -- if moving the profile helps you, developers might be interested in it to find out what was wrong with it.

Regressions

Wishlists

  • For Wishlist reports, many of these are requests to implement a feature in LibreOffice found in MS Office. A broad but good rule of thumb is if you want LibreOffice to do something that MS Office does (MS Office compatibility expectation), please document how specifically MS Office does it, then how LibreOffice does not or does not do well that which you desire. Please keep in mind, pocket cases exist where LibreOffice intentionally does not do what MS Office does (ex. leap year implementation https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/libreoffice/+bug/456100).

Triaging LibreOffice Bugs

Writer and Calc

  • For bugs in Writer, it is helpful to check to see if the problem exists in AbiWord. For bugs in Calc, it is helpful to check to see if the problem exists in Gnumeric. Sometimes, AbiWord and Gnumeric give the bug reporter a usable workaround to the problem (and vice versa). If a workaround is found, feel free to document it in the report. As well, while not quite apples and oranges code wise, it gives LibreOffice developers code to base a patch on.

Wishlist Reports

  • For Wishlist reports, they most likely should be marked Won't Fix Wishlist. This is due to how Ubuntu diverts very little from the LibreOffice upstream source release, and upstream's rapid maintenance cadence.
    A Won't Fix Wishlist stock reply:

Thank you for reporting this and helping making Ubuntu better. Regarding this report:
- This is a clearcut upstream issue. You are welcome to send this to the developers of the software by following the instructions at http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/BugReport . If you have done so, please tell us the number of the upstream bug (or the link), so we can add a bugwatch that will inform us about its status.
- Marking LibreOffice Packaging and libreoffice (Ubuntu) => Won't Fix Wishlist. This does not mean the issue will not be cared about, but if it is cared about (even by Ubuntu/Canonical contributors), it is done upstream at LibreOffice.

How to Forward Bugs Upstream

  • Once marked Triaged, a report may be filed upstream using the LibreOffice Bug Submission Assistant 1.

    • Once a remote bug watch has been added to a bug report, it is helpful to append [Upstream] to the beginning of the bug title. This helps in searching for bugs reports by title. Please do not append this unless a remote bug watch has been added to the report as this creates confusion on which bugs have been reported upstream and which have not.


CategoryBugSquad CategoryDebugging