Issues
Contributing Guidelines for Issues
How to Contribute in Issues
For any issue, there are fundamentally three ways an individual can contribute:
By opening the issue for discussion: For instance, if you believe that you have uncovered a bug in Bastion or if you have a suggestion, creating a new issue in the respective repository's issue tracker is the way to do it.
By helping to triage the issue: This can be done either by providing supporting details (a test case that demonstrates a bug), or providing suggestions on how to address the issue.
By helping to resolve the issue: Typically this is done either in the form of demonstrating that the reported bug is not a problem after all, or by suggesting how to implement the requested feature or suggestion, or more often, by opening a Pull Request that changes some bit of something in the code in a concrete and reviewable manner.
Because we only limit the issue trackers of all the repositories to bug reports and suggestions, questions or requests for general help regarding Bastion and the project should be directed to the Bastion HQ.
Submitting an Issue
When opening a new issue in any of Bastion's repository, you will be presented with a basic template that should be filled in.
If you believe that you have uncovered a bug/issue or if you have want to request any feature or suggest something in any repository, please fill out this form, following the template to the best of your ability. Some repository might ask you for more details based on the requirements. Do not worry if you cannot answer every detail, just fill in what you can.
The two most important pieces of information we need in order to properly evaluate the report is a description of the behavior you are seeing or want to suggest and, in case of bug reports, a simple test case we can use to recreate the problem on our own. If we cannot recreate the issue, it becomes impossible for us to fix.
In order to rule out the possibility of bugs introduced by userland code, you shouldn't have modified any code of Bastion unless you've been told to do so by a developer of Bastion.
If the bug occurs only when you're using a specific userland/custom module, or when you've modified some part of the code, there is a very good chance that either:
the module has a bug, or
something in the core has changed that broke the module.
See How to create a Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable example.
Triaging an Issue
Once an issue has been opened, it is not uncommon for there to be discussion around it. Some contributors may have differing opinions about the issue, including whether the behavior being seen is a bug or a feature or if the requested feature/suggestion can already be done in some way using existing features or they may see it as unneeded. This discussion is part of the process and should be kept focused, helpful, and professional.
Short, clipped responses — that provide neither additional context nor supporting detail — are not helpful or professional. To many, such responses are simply annoying and unfriendly.
Contributors are encouraged to help one another make forward progress as much as possible, empowering one another to solve/discuss issues collaboratively. If you choose to comment on an issue that you feel either is not a problem that needs to be fixed, or if you encounter information in an issue that you feel is incorrect, or either if you think the requested feature/suggestion can be done using existing features or if you think it is unneeded, explain why you feel that way with additional supporting context, and be willing to be convinced that you may be wrong. By doing so, we can often reach the correct outcome much faster.
Resolving an Issue
In the vast majority of cases, issues/feature requests are resolved/implemented by opening a Pull Request. The process for opening and reviewing a Pull Request is similar to that of opening and triaging issues, but carries with it a necessary review and approval workflow that ensures that the proposed changes meet the minimal quality and functional guidelines of the project.
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