Bugtracker

The address of our bug tracker is:

https://www.freecadweb.org/tracker

The Tracker is the place toː report bugs, submit feature requests, patches, or request to merge your branch if you developed something using Git. The tracker is divided into 'Workbenches', so please be specific and file your request in the appropriate subsection. In case of doubt, leave it in the "FreeCAD" section.

Recommended Workflow

As shown in the above flowchart, before creating tickets, please always first search the forums and bugtracker to discover if your issue is a known issue. This saves a lot of time/work for developers and volunteers that could be spending said time making FreeCAD even more awesome.

Reporting bugs

If you think you might have found a bug, you are welcome to report it as long as you have followed our step-by-step guidelinesː

Make sure you're using the most up to date version of FreeCAD. NOTEː your bug may be fixed in the Development (unstable) version. The average user runs the stable version of FC.
Make sure your bug is really a bug, that is, something that should be working but isn't. Make sure the same bug hasn't been reported before by first searching the bugtracker and forum.
- Rememberː if you aren't sure, please don't hesitate to explain your problem/bug in the Help forum and ask what to do.
- Noteː before posting to the forum please read the Forum Guidelines.
Describe as clearly as possible the problem, and how it can be reproduced. If we can not verify the bug, we might not be able to fix it.
- This means reporting in a clear, well-formatted, step-by-step fashion so even an amateur user could reproduce.
- Recommendedː Screenshots of the bug are also very helpful to include. Windows users: please do not attach screen captures in Word or PDF format. Use the Windows Snipping tool to save your capture as a PNG image.
- Recommendedː Even better, an Animated gif or Screencast would also increase the likelihood of reproducing the issue.
Add an example FreeCAD file (.FCStd file) so devs/testers can quickly reproduce the bug.
- Please don't zip your *.FCStd file, it is already zipped.
- File attachments are limited in size. If your *.FCStd file is too big to attach, you can use an online storage service (many are free like Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, Dropbox).
Include all the information from the "Copy to Clipboard" button in the Help (menu) -> About FreeCAD dialogue. Make sure your data includes your OCC or OCE version.
Please file one separate report for each bug.
If your bug causes a crash in FreeCAD and you're on a system that supports it you can try running a debug backtrace and attach said trace to the ticket. This can save devs a lot of time pinpointing the source of the crash. See Debugging for more details.

Requesting features

If you want something to appear in FreeCAD that is not implemented yet, it is not a bug but a feature request.

IMPORTANTː Before requesting a potential Feature Request please be certain that you are the first one doing so by searching the forums and the bugtracker. If you have concluded that there are no pre-existing tickets/discussions the next step is toː
Start a forum thread to discuss your feature request with the community via the Open Discussion forum.
Once the community agrees that this is a valid Feature, you then can open a ticket on the tracker (file it under feature request instead of bug).

NOTE #1 To keep things organized please remember to link the forum thread URL into the ticket and the ticket number (as a link) in to the forum thread.
NOTE #2 Keep in mind there are no guarantees that your wish will be fulfilled.

FreeCAD Bugtracker report page - use the dropdown to correctly designate what the ticket is

Submitting patches

In case you have programmed a bug fix, an extension or something else that can be of public use in FreeCAD, create a patch using the Git diff tool and submit it on the same tracker (file it as patch).

Addendumː FreeCAD development has switched to the GitHub development model so the workflow for submitting patches has been greatly enhanced/streamlined by submitting Pull Requests.

Open a forum thread in the Developer subforum to announce and discuss your patch.
Submit your PR to the FreeCAD GitHub repo. Be sure to link the forum thread in to the git commit summary.
Paste the PR link in to the forum thread for the devs/testers to test.
Be present for the discussion so that your code can potentially be merged more effectively.

NOTEː the FreeCAD community recommends to first discuss any large revision to the source code in advance to save everyone time.

Requesting merge

(Same guidelines as Submiting patches)

If you have created a git branch containing changes that you would like to see merged into the FreeCAD code, you can ask there to have your branch reviewed and merged if the FreeCAD developers are OK with it. You must first publish your branch to a public git repository (github, gitlab, bitbucket, sourceforge etc...) and then give the URL of your branch in your merge request.

MantisBT Tips and Tricks

MantisBT Markup

MantisBT (Mantis Bug Tracker) has it's own unique markup.

@mention - works just like on GitHub where if you prepend '@' to someone's username they will receive an email that they have been 'mentioned' in a ticket thread

#1234 - By adding a hash tag in front of a number a shortcut to link to another ticket within MantisBT will present.
Note: if you hover over a ticket it will show you the summary + if the ticket is closed, it will be struck-through like ~~#1234~~.

~5678 - a shortcut that links to a bug note within a ticket. This can be used to reference someone's response within the thread. Each person that posts will show a unique ~#### number next to their username. If you look at the image in the example, you see that the shortcut is referencing the ticket number:comment number of said ticket

<del></del> - Using these tags will ~~strikeout text~~.

<code></code> - To present a line or block of code, use this tag and it will colorize and differentiate it elegantly.

MantisBT BBCode

In addition to the above Tracker/MantisBT ̠Markup one also has the possibility to use BBCode format. For a comprehensive list see the BBCode plus plugin page. Here is a list of supported BBCode tagsː [img][/img] - Images [url][/url] - Links [email][/email] - Email addresses [color=red][/color] - Colored text [highlight=yellow][/highlight] - Highlighted text [size][/size] - Font size [list][/list] - Lists [list=1][/list] - Numbered lists (number is starting number) [*] - List items [b][/b] - Bold [u][/u] - underline [i][/i] - Italic [s][/s] - Strikethrough [left][/left] - Left align [center][/center] - Center [right][/right] - Right align [justify][/justify] - Justify [hr] - Horizontal rule [sub][/sub] - Subscript [sup][/sup] - Superscript [table][/table] - Table [table=1][/table] - Table with border of specified width [tr][/tr] - Table row [td][/td] - Table column [code][/code] - Code block [code=sql][/code] - Code block with language definition [code start=3][/code] - Code block with line numbers starting at number [quote][/quote] - Quote by *someone* (no name) [quote=name][/quote] - Quote by *name*

MantisBT <=> GitHub Markup

Below are special MantisBT Source-Integration plugin keywords which will link to the FreeCAD GitHub repo. See Tracker#GitHub_and_MantisBT.

c:FreeCAD:git commit hash: - c stands for 'commit'. FreeCAD stands for the FreeCAD GitHub repo. 'git commit hash' is the specific git commit hash to reference. Note: the trailing colon is necessary. Exampleː cːFreeCADː709d2f325db0490016807b8fa6f49d1c867b6bd8ː
d:FreeCAD:git commit hash: - similar to the above, d stands for 'diff' which will provide a Diff view of the commit. Exampleː dːFreeCADː709d2f325db0490016807b8fa6f49d1c867b6bd8ː
p:FreeCAD:pullrequest: - similar to the above, p stands for Pull Request. Exampleː pːFreeCADː498ː

GitHub and MantisBT

The FreeCAD bugtracker has a plug-in called Source Integration which essentially ties both the FreeCAD GitHub repo to our MantisBT tracker. It makes it easier to track and associate git commits with their respective MantisBT tickets. The Source Integration plugin scans the git commit messages for specific keywords in order to execute the following actions:

Note The below keywords need to be added in the git commit message and not the PR subject

Attaching a git commit to a ticket

The format MantisBT will recognize:

bug #1234
bugs #1234, #5678
issue #1234
issues #1234, #5678
report #1234
reports #1234, #5678

For the inquisitive here is the regex MantisBT uses for this operation:
/(?:bugs?|issues?|reports?)+\s*:?\s+(?:#(?:\d+)[,\.\s]*)+/i

Remotely resolving a ticket