How to Submit a Bug Report

Submitting a bug reports is very important. Submitting correct bug reports is even more.

Before you Submit any bug

• If your report is about a crash or a third-party plugin:

Remember: we don't support third-party plugins, such as those in the Purple Plugin Pack, encryption plugins, etc. We didn't develop those plugins and can't help you with those issues. (A sizable majority of crashes are caused by misbehaving plugins.)

1. Make sure your plugins are of the most current version available.

2. Disable plugins you have loaded (one by one) until you eliminate the source of the crash. *If your crash is a crash on startup, you can try renaming the prefs.xml file in .purple to something such as prefs.xml.old to force a startup without plugins. Note that this will lose all settings stored there.
   • If you renamed prefs.xml, enable plugins one at a time and try to reproduce the crash. Unload those plugins that don't cause the crash to aid troubleshooting. Once you have narrowed the cause down, continue with the instructions.
   • If disabling a specific plugin solves the crash, make sure your plugins are all updated to the most current release.

• If all plugins are fully up to date (but the issue continues to occur):
  1. Follow the instructions below to get a .RPT file (Windows users), or get a backtrace (other OS users).
  2. Report the issue to the authors of the plugin, not us.

• If all plugins are disabled (but the issue continues to occur), follow the steps below.

• If your bug is other than third-party plugin or crash -related (new features, improvements, etc.), follow the steps below.

Steps for Bug Report Submission

1. Check that your problem is not related to a third-party plugin or a crash (read above). If your ploblem is related to a crash (whether or not it's also related to a third-party plugin), you will have to get the proper log (read below).

2. ​Search for existing bug reports, in order not to submit a duplicated one.

3. ​Create a new ticket.
   Note: You must be logged in to submit or comment on tickets! To create a login if you do not have one, click the "Register" link on the top right-hand corner of any tracker page.

What to do if Pidgin crashes

Windows Users

• Download and install ​the debug version of Pidgin for Windows.
• The next time you run Pidgin and it crashes, the call stack will be dumped to a pidgin.RPT file in your Pidgin install directory (usually C:\Program Files\Pidgin).
  • Vista users: If you are running with UAC enabled (or don't know what that statement means), check for it in %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\Pidgin. If you have UAC disabled, it will be in the Pidgin install directory.
• When submitting a bug report, give a detailed description on how to reproduce your bug and attach the most recent crash dump from your pidgin.RPT.
  • Note that each new crash dump will append to the file, so if you have several crashes, all the dumps will be present.

The Microsoft Windows "Error Report" isn't useful in any way; please do not include it in the bug report.

Obtaining a Debug Log

If asked to obtain a debug log, the following steps will help you do so.

If Pidgin isn't crashing, you can use the Debug Window (Help->Debug Window) to obtain the debug log output.

If Pidgin is crashing, you can save the debug output to a file by opening a Command Prompt window and starting Pidgin as follows:
(You should replace C:\Program Files\Pidgin with the path to which you installed Pidgin if it is different)

cd "C:\Program Files\Pidgin"
pidgin.exe -d 2>&1 > "%USERPROFILE%\debug.log"

This will cause the debug output to be saved in a file called debug.log in your %USERPROFILE% directory.

Preemptive Debug Logging

Pidgin just hiccuped, you want to file a ticket but you wish you had saved the debug log don't you? Here is a script to have it made for you all the time.

Copy this to a *.bat file in your pidgin install directory and use a shortcut to it instead of pidgin.exe when starting pidgin. To make it even less intrusive you can change the icon to the pidgin icon and set the command window to open minimized in the properties of the shortcut (right click -> properties )

@ECHO off
REM stay quiet

REM make sure the debug directory exists
IF NOT EXIST debug mkdir debug

REM get the date and time
SET dt=%date%_%time%

REM save the nice formatting
SET odt=%date% %time%

REM replace the / with -
SET dt=%dt:/=-%

REM replace the ' ' with 0
SET dt=%dt: =0% 

REM replace the : with .
SET dt=%dt::=.%

REM remove the first 4 characters which are the day plus a space
SET dt=%dt:~4%

REM build the logfile name
SET logfile="debug\%dt%.log"

REM remove the space that gets created for some reason...
SET logfile=%logfile: =% 

REM write a nice header
ECHO ------------------------------------------------- > %logfile%
ECHO Pidgin Debug Log For %odt% >> %logfile%
ECHO ------------------------------------------------- >> %logfile%

REM start pidgin without an extra command window
START /B pidgin -d 2>&1 >> %logfile%

REM close this command window
EXIT

All other (non-Windows) OS users

Get a backtrace