widelands

how to report a crash under Windows?

Asked by LAZA

i downloaded the current version bzr6810 from Tinos site, but got a crash every time after the dialogs in the first scenario, Barbarians. It is also impossible to build the wood cutter cause the next dialog pops up and dialog windows go on an on till the crash...

So how can i report a crash without any files or error dialogs?
Is it possible to start WL in an "debug mode" so there is an file created?

The most of this information should be also on the website, but i could not find anything about this problem; neither the wiki nor the development section.

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SirVer
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_aD (ad-simplypeachy) said : 		#1

Addresses the bug you describe, but doesn't answer your question about debugging in Windows.

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Best SirVer (sirver) said : 		#2

You already did most of what can be expected: you reported an issue. Widelands writes a stdout.txt file into the directory where the .exe is (I think), but it will not be useful in this particular case because the game runs into an infinite loop - so there will not be any crash to really report.

If the game crashes in the true sense of the word - it will write more information into this file. But this infinite loop was easy to reproduce after knowing about it - so thanks for reporting :)'

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LAZA (laza74) said : 		#3

Thanks for the information!

So next time i have to look for:
C:\Programs\Widelands\stdout.txt

A extra section in the wiki on the homepage would be great! ;-)

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LAZA (laza74) said : 		#4

Thanks SirVer, that solved my question.

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SirVer (sirver) said : 		#5

It is a Wiki for a reason - feel free to add it someplace. I would not know which place is good for this though.

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LAZA (laza74) said : 		#6

I tried a bit but it is far from finished.

https://wl.widelands.org/wiki/How%20to%20Write%20a%20Good%20Bug%20Report/

Some more examples with MS OSes will floow the next days if i try them in an VM...

Critics welcome, here, or as message or you write directly in the article.

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SirVer (sirver) said : 		#7

Thanks for writing this. In my experience it will not help much though, as very few people are willing to read through anything before reporting anything. Ideally we should have a prefilled form in the bug asking form - but I do not think launchpad supports that.

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LAZA (laza74) said : 		#8

So you think on someting like on Battle for Wesnoth the feedback about missions?
There are several questions about the mission and at the end a free text field to fill out...

But imho such a formular has an big disadvantage:
the reporter has to fill out the questions completly! and this is a very long process.
Second, there has to been two (or three?) different formulars for people, who doen't know their configuration for each different OS ...

This makes it at least a lot of longer and not very clear...

So, i see the advantage of your suggestion:
The easiest way to make this happen is: make a poll out of it!

I'm willing to do it or at least make an blueprint (at the time i'm now at home and can typing :-)

But for atm i will (and i hope the others also) keep the half-made explanations - better than a blank side ;-)

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SirVer (sirver) said : 		#9

I am not familiar how bow does things these days - I haven't started the game for at least a year. I was more thinking about getting a prefilled text fields with some questions as soon as you report a bug on launchpad - unfortunately I did not find a way to do that.

I'd rather keep debugging cruft (and questionaires) out of Widelands - it does not make for a very fun experience and above all, Widelands should be fun.