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 Gitorious merge requests ======================== Prefer sending pull request to mail list. More people will notice a change being proposed, making potential discussion to capture wider point of view. Using gitorious merge reguest in combination mail list announcement is fine. 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).