Asking for Help¶
If you run into problems with yt, you should feel encouraged to ask for help – whether this comes in the form of reporting a bug or emailing the mailing list. If something doesn’t work for you, it’s in everyone’s best interests to make sure that it gets fixed.
The Mailing List¶
The mailing list should be your first stop, every time and always. If you are having a problem, it might be something other people have struggled with and fixed on their own, or it might be a bug – in which case it has to be brought to the attention of the developers!
There are two mailing lists, yt-users and yt-dev. The first should be used for asking for help, suggesting features and so on, and the latter has more chatter about the way the code is developed and discussions of changes and feature improvements.
If you email yt-users asking for help, there are several things you must provide, or else we won’t be able to do much:
- What it is that went wrong, and how you knew it went wrong.
- A traceback if appropriate – but see Error Reporting with the Pastebin for some help with that.
- If possible, the smallest number of steps that can reproduce the problem.
- Which version of the code you are using.
When you email the list, providing this information can help the developers understand what you did, how it went wrong, and any potential fixes or similar problems they have seen in the past. Without this context, it can be very difficult to help out!
Installation Issues¶
If you are having installation issues, and you’ve read the Installation section of the manual, you should definitely email the yt-users email list. You should provide information about the host, the version of the code you are using, and the output of yt_install.log from your installation. We are very interested in making sure that yt installs everywhere!
Vanilla Usage Issues¶
If you’re running yt without having made any modifications to the code base, please provide as much of your script as you are able to. Submitting both the script and the traceback to the pastebin (as described in The Pastebin) is usually sufficient to reproduce the error.
Customization and Scripting Issues¶
If you have customized yt in some way, or created your own plugins file (as described in The Plugin File) then it may be necessary to supply both your patches to the source and the plugin file, if you are utilizing something defined in that file.
How To Report A Bug¶
The first step, when reporting a bug, is to identify the smallest piece of code that reproduces the bug.
To submit a bug report, register an account on the yt Trac site and submit a new ticket. Alternatively, email the yt-users mailing list and we will construct a new ticket in your stead.
