Issue Tracker

All issues, bugs and contributions to the Portico Project are managed in a central database. This way, any work that is being carried out on Portico can be associated with a unique issue id and can be tracked independently. Portico uses Jira for this purpose and has been granted a free license by its creators Atlassian due to its open source status. See Acknowledgements for more details.

Using Jira
Jira is quite easy to use and extensive documentation available online. The process for registering, updating and tracking issues is largely the same regardless of the type of issue (bug, patch, feature request, and so on). This article is just a quick guide to registering an issue and working with Jira.

Create the Issue
To register an issue, go to the Jira page and click on "CREATE NEW ISSUE":



If you want to receive notifications of events that happen to the issue, or comment on an issue, or attach a file to an issue (and so on) you will need to make sure you register an account before you create the issue.

Ensure it is the right type
Before you move on, you will need to make sure you are registering the issue in the right project (Portico in this case) and that you are registering the correct type of issue. The image below shows the options available to you:




 * Bug: You have discovered a bug in Portico and would like to let the developers know.
 * New Feature: Your issue is a request for a new feature. If you are intending to contribute this feature yourself, be sure to mention that in the next screen.
 * Task: Generally you shouldn't use this.
 * Improvement: If you have an improvement request for an existing feature. If you are intending to contribute this improvement yourself, be sure to mention that in the next screen.
 * Patch: If you have an patch that doesn't fall into any of the categories above, use this type.

Fill out the details
Once you have clicked next, you will be presented with a screen containing more details.

The images below show the next page (had to be split in two for screen shot)





Be sure to fill out each section marked with an arrow (but not the other sections).


 * Summary: Include a summary of the problem. There is room for more details in the description field below
 * Components: If you know or believe you know what component of portico the problem is in, select it from this list. If you don't know, just ignore it
 * Affects Version: This is the version (or versions) of Portico that you are running and have noticed the problem (or lack of a feature) with.
 * Environment: If you have a bug, it is important to tell us about your environment. Windows or Linux? What version or distribution? Java or C++ interface? and so on.
 * Description: This is where you can put a detailed description of the problem (the more detailed the better). Including things like snippets of log output or stack traces are VERY helpful. Note that if you are including log output, code, or stack traces, it is important to wrap them up in {code} tags.

The {code} tag
Jira is capable of formatting your entries nicely. If you have anything like code or log snippets, it is important to wrap them up in code tags. For example, you might have something like this:

{code} public class MyFedAmb extends NullFederateAmbassador {   ... } {code}

All you have to do is put a {code} tag at the start and end of the section you want to format and Jira will do the rest.

Once you have registered the issue, a unique number will be assigned to it and you will be redirected to the page with all the information. Any number of actions can take place here, but the most interesting ones are:


 * Comment: Comments can be attached to an issue, so discussion and notification can take place
 * Watch: You can "watch" an issue, and will be emailed when anything happens to it (status changes, people comment, etc...)
 * Attachments: Attachments can be added to an issue, such as log or patch files etc...