Reporting issues

If you’ve found a bug in CKAN, open a new issue on CKAN’s GitHub Issues (try searching first to see if there’s already an issue for your bug).

If you can fix the bug yourself, please send a pull request!

Do not use an issue to ask how to do something - for that use StackOverflow with the ‘ckan’ tag.

Do not use an issue to suggest an significant change to CKAN - instead create an issue at https://github.com/ckan/ideas-and-roadmap.

Writing a good issue

  • Describe what went wrong
  • Say what you were doing when it went wrong
  • If in doubt, provide detailed steps for someone else to recreate the problem.
  • A screenshot is often helpful
  • If it is a 500 error / ServerError / exception then it’s essential to supply the full stack trace provided in the CKAN log.

Issues process

The CKAN Technical Team reviews new issues twice a week. They aim to assign someone on the Team to take responsibility for it. These are the sorts of actions to expect:

  • If it is a serious bug and the person who raised it won’t fix it then the Technical Team will aim to create a fix.
  • A feature that you plan to code shortly will be happily discussed. It’s often good to get the team’s support for a feature before writing lots of code. You can then quote the issue number in the commit messages and branch name. (Larger changes or suggestions by non-contributers are better discussed on https://github.com/ckan/ideas-and-roadmap instead)
  • Features may be marked “Good for Contribution” which means the Team is happy to see this happen, but the Team are not offering to do it.

Old issues

If an issue has little activity for 12 months then it should be closed. If someone is still keen for it to happen then they should comment, re-open it and push it forward.