Reporting Bugs and Requesting Features

If you have found a bug in Geary or would like to request a new feature, here’s what to do:

1. Ask the community about the problem or feature, in case it has already known

2. Report it if it is a new issue

3. Get a stack trace for crashes, and add it to the bug report

Ask the community

Is the problem already known? Is it a configuration problem or something you're not sure about? Not sure either way? Look in the documentation and check topics tagged as geary tag on GNOME Discourse first. If you can't find a solution there, please post the problem to GNOME Discourse and ensure it is tagged as geary, or ask on the Geary chat channel on Matrix, and the Geary and GNOME community can help you out.

You can also search through existing issues on GitLab. In general, try searching with similar words and partial prefixes. For example, if the bug is about attaching files, search for “attach” instead of “attaching” or “attachments.” If the bug has already been reported, vote for it with a thumbs up, and switch on notifications for the issue to receive updates about it. Feel free to add missing detail to issues, but please avoid "me too" comments, thanks!

Report it

If you are sure the behaviour you are seeing is a new, unreported bug, please collect debug logging and system information, then attach it to a new issue in GitLab:

1. Launch the Geary Inspector by typing <Alt> + <Shift> + I, select the appropriate account and logging domains using the Inspector's sidebar to filter the log entries as needed, then click the Save button

2. Go to the new issue page on GitLab and:

   • In the Title field, enter a short summary in the issue, for example: Error downloading older mail from Gmail

   • In the Description drop-down menu, choose the bug report template and fill in the requested information in the text field below it:

     • Geary version
     • Installation method
     • Desktop environment
     • Operating system and version
     • Email provider
     • What happened?
     • What did you expect to happen?
   • Attach the log files you saved in the step above

3. Click Submit Issue

Stack trace

If the bug is a crash or a hang and is repeatable, please follow the following steps to generate a backtrace.

1. Install debug symbols if possible.

Flatpak

Run: flatpak install flathub org.gnome.Geary.Debug org.gnome.Sdk.Debug

Fedora

Run: sudo dnf debuginfo-install geary glib2 gtk3

Ubuntu

Follow the Ubuntu wiki instructions for installing dbgsym packages, then run: sudo apt install geary-dbgsym libglib2.0-0-dbgsym libgtk-3-0-dbgsym

2. Run Geary under GDB.

If you have installed Geary using Flatpak, run the following command first before proceeding:

flatpak run --devel --command=sh org.gnome.Geary

Launch GDB:

G_DEBUG=fatal-criticals gdb --args geary --debug

At the (gdb) prompt, enter the following two commands:

handle SIGUSR1 noprint
run

3. Make the crash happen or in the case of a hang, press Ctrl-C to return to the GDB console.

In GDB, generate a backtrace by entering the following command:

backtrace full

This will print out a stack trace, you can then type quit to exit GDB and close Geary.

4. Once done, copy and paste the debug output into a plain text file (for example, using Gedit) and attach when filing your bug.

Please examine the debug output for private information. You may discover email addresses, folder names, etc. that you do not want to share. Remember, your bug report is public to the world, including this file. Please redact or edit the debug file before posting it.