Doesn’t happen to me. Try opening KiCad from commandline (terminal window) with the command “kicad” and see the output. Is it a segmentation fault? If yes, you can get a core dump and attach it to the report. Otherwise, if nobody is able to reproduce it, it can’t be fixed because nobody has an idea what could be the reason. Usually just going through the source code trying to see if there is a problem doesn’t help.
Edit: I just noticed from another thread that you already now about core dumps.
The name you give the footprint, the name of the library and the path to the lib (in the fp-lib-table. Including what the environment variables are set to if you use one.) might also be of interest.
The issue should be fixed now, than you for the report. It is better to report problems on the bug tracker, as it gives the right means to manage the issues and makes them less likely to become forgotten. Not to mention that the developers get instant e-mail notifications about the problems reported on the bug tracker.
Of course, the problem for the average user is to know whether it is a real problem with KiCad, user error or support issue.
In order to avoid noise on the bug tracker, I think it is a good idea to post issues here first, the fact is a lot of issues are known about an frequently encountered. Quite often someone knows a fix or workaround.
Although there is currently a lot of attention paid to new issues, there are lot of old issues on the bug tracker which apparently have never been looked at. I occasionally tried to help out with triaging issues, but Wayne indicated he doesn’t like non-devs responding to bugs, so I stopped doing that.
In the cases of crashes, they should always be reported, but they may already be known. Problems with very recent nightlies are likely to be less well known.
We already have an FAQ entry I found a bug. What now?. I think the suggested practice is to post a quick question here, then if it looks like a new and real issue it can be raised on the bug tracker to hopefully get the attention of devs.
Right, I know how to do core dumps and extract the information developers need. But sometimes I don’t have enough time om my day to put all the information ASAP. So, I prefer to say something to avoid forget to report the issue. I believe more reports are better. But you are completely right, I have to add more information.
Oh, I don’t think I have it the same settings anymore. But this gives me a good idea of the problem. I started building my library and everything was ok then after some hours of work the issue appeared. Probably I’ve changed some filenames. I’ve also upgraded my Kicad. I don’t have the issue anymore.
I agree with you and this approach is appreciated, thank you. I just wanted to point out that bugs which are reported exclusively here have a lesser chance to become fixed.