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.
Search the Documentation¶
The first thing that you want to do if you encounter an issue with yt is to do a cursory check of the documentation. This doesn’t mean you have to read all of the docs top-to-bottom, but you should at least run a search to see if relevant topics have been answered in the docs. Click on the search field to the right of this window and enter your text. Another good place to look for answers in the documentation is our Frequently Asked Questions page.
Search/Ask the Mailing List¶
OK, so there was no obvious solution to your problem in the documentation. It is possible that someone else experienced the problem before you did, and wrote to the mailing list about it. You can easily check the mailing list archive with the other search field to the right of this window (or you can use the search field below).
If you didn’t find any hint of a solution in the archive, then feel free to write to the mailing list regarding your problems. 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 – see Error Reporting with the Pastebin for some help with that.
- If possible, the smallest number of steps that can reproduce the problem. If you’re demonstrating the bug with code, you may find the The Pastebin useful.If you’ve got an image output that demonstrates your problem, you may find the upload_image function useful.
- 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!
IRC¶
If you want a more interactive experience, you could try jumping into our IRC channel to get your questions answered in a chatroom style environment. You don’t even need to have any special IRC client in order to join. We are the #yt channel on irc.freenode.net, but you can also connect using your web browser by going to http://yt-project.org/irc.html . There are usually 2-8 members of the user base and development team online, so you’ll probably get your answers quickly.
How To Report A Bug¶
If you have gone through all of the above steps, and you’re still encountering problems, then you have found 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, you can either directly create one through the BitBucket web interface, or you can use the command line yt bugreport to interactively create one. Alternatively, email the yt-users mailing list and we will construct a new ticket in your stead.
Installation Issues¶
If you are having installation issues, 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.