2 Reporting a Defect Against the Yocto Project and OpenEmbedded

You can use the Yocto Project instance of Bugzilla to submit a defect (bug) against BitBake, OpenEmbedded-Core, against any other Yocto Project component or for tool issues. For additional information on this implementation of Bugzilla see the “Yocto Project Bugzilla” section in the Yocto Project Reference Manual. For more detail on any of the following steps, see the Yocto Project Bugzilla wiki page.

Use the following general steps to submit a bug:

  1. Open the Yocto Project implementation of Bugzilla.

  2. Click “File a Bug” to enter a new bug.

  3. Choose the appropriate “Classification”, “Product”, and “Component” for which the bug was found. Bugs for the Yocto Project fall into one of several classifications, which in turn break down into several products and components. For example, for a bug against the meta-intel layer, you would choose “Build System, Metadata & Runtime”, “BSPs”, and “bsps-meta-intel”, respectively.

  4. Choose the “Version” of the Yocto Project for which you found the bug (e.g. 4.0.21).

  5. Determine and select the “Severity” of the bug. The severity indicates how the bug impacted your work.

  6. Choose the “Hardware” that the bug impacts.

  7. Choose the “Architecture” that the bug impacts.

  8. Choose a “Documentation change” item for the bug. Fixing a bug might or might not affect the Yocto Project documentation. If you are unsure of the impact to the documentation, select “Don’t Know”.

  9. Provide a brief “Summary” of the bug. Try to limit your summary to just a line or two and be sure to capture the essence of the bug.

  10. Provide a detailed “Description” of the bug. You should provide as much detail as you can about the context, behavior, output, and so forth that surrounds the bug. You can even attach supporting files for output from logs by using the “Add an attachment” button.

  11. Click the “Submit Bug” button submit the bug. A new Bugzilla number is assigned to the bug and the defect is logged in the bug tracking system.

Once you file a bug, the bug is processed by the Yocto Project Bug Triage Team and further details concerning the bug are assigned (e.g. priority and owner). You are the “Submitter” of the bug and any further categorization, progress, or comments on the bug result in Bugzilla sending you an automated email concerning the particular change or progress to the bug.

There are no guarantees about if or when a bug might be worked on since an open-source project has no dedicated engineering resources. However, the project does have a good track record of resolving common issues over the medium and long term. We do encourage people to file bugs so issues are at least known about. It helps other users when they find somebody having the same issue as they do, and an issue that is unknown is much less likely to ever be fixed!