Reporting Problems and Receiving Support

Here you can report bugs found in Far Manager.
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t-rex
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Reporting Problems and Receiving Support

Post by t-rex »

The FAR File and Archive Manager

Reporting Problems and Receiving Support

By following these simple rules, you have the best chances of getting your problem successfully solved.

1. Make sure that the problem you've encountered is not an ordinary situation or a known problem: see FAR Help, FAQ, TechInfo and WhatsNew. If it's possible, you should also search network resources for the answers (links to the resources are located in help chapter "Overview of plugin capabilities"). Only if the problem is not known, move to step 2, otherwise there's no need to produce extra traffic, it does not stimulate developers in any way, but distracts them.

2. Because FAR is commonly used with plug-ins, first it is necessary to locate the source of the problem.

2.1. Start FAR without plug-ins. You can do it with "far.exe /p" command. Try to reproduce the problem situation. If the problem persists, it makes sense to inform FAR developers about the problem (see step 3).

2.2. If problem does not persist when running FAR without plug-ins, you'll have to find out which plug-in(s) are essential for the problem to emerge. In order to do it, for example, you can remove plug-ins one by one, starting with the most recently installed ones, and every time check whether the problem still exists. If you have found the plugin causing the problem and the plugin is not included in the FAR distribution, you should report the problem to the author of that plugin.

2.3. If the found "bad" plug-in is included in the FAR distribution, or you failed to find out which plug-in is essential to reproduce the problem, inform FAR developers about it (see step 3). If the problem is in the MultiArc plugin, see Step 4. If the problem is in the FTP plugin, see Step 5.

3. You should inform the FAR Group about the problem (the contacts are in the Contacts.txt file).

3.1. Follow the usual rules when reporting a problem:
- Isolate the conditions under which the problem appears as narrow as you can - it helps to find its cause faster. Try not to specify irrelevant information (for example, do not list all the plug-ins you have installed if it is not necessary to reproduce the problem). If you are not sure whether some condition is relevant or not, you'd better specify it just in case (and comment that you are not sure if it's relevant).
- Make sure that the problem is not caused by macros you may have recorded. Press Ctrl-. (Ctrl-point) to switch macros off, and try to reproduce the problem again.
- If it's possible, try to reproduce the problem on different versions of FAR, Windows, other computers and with different FAR settings. Include a report on these experiments in your message about the problem.

3.2. Specify the conditions to reproduce the problem (Windows version, type of the filesystem, type of the local network, FAR version, versions of installed plug-ins, macros etc - the necessary and sufficient set of conditions to repeat the problem).

3.3. If some specific files are necessary to reproduce the problem, you should attach them to your message, only if the overall message size does not exceed 80k. If the size exceeds this value, you'd better put the necessary file to an HTTP or FTP site and just add the URL to the file to the message.

3.4. If the problem concerns Plugins API, try to write a minimal test plug-in which demonstrates the problem and attach the archive (compiled plug-in and its sources) to your message.

3.5. Answer the following questions:
- what actions were performed?
- what result did you expect?
- what happened instead?

3.6. Supply additional comments (if applicable).

4. Additions concerning MultiArc

4.1. When describing MultiArc errors related to a specific archiver, you should also specify its version and command lines for it.

4.2. A little test archive necessary to reproduce the problem (no more than 30k), or a link to such an archive, will be appreciated.

5. Additions concerning FTP

5.1. If you have found a problem in the FTP plugin, please check whether it was fixed in an updated version of the plugin released after the public version of FAR. The address where the latest version of the FTP plugin can be downloaded is specified in Plugins\FTP\Readme.txt.

5.2. All questions and problem reports related to the FTP plugin should be sent directly to its developer, jourim@uran.ru

6. A general notice concerning files attached - it is specific to the mailserver that any files attached with .exe, .dll, .sys, .bat, .cmd, .pif, .cpl, .com, .vbs, and .js extensions are removed. So, before sending such files to any address at farmanager.com, you should archive them first.


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