Problem Reporting

While we always aim to release DataNucleus with as few bugs as possible, it is possible that during the release cycle some issues will come up. Our release process uses more than 1000 unit tests aimed at reproducing the majority of situations that users may come across, though clearly we can never cover all situations with these tests. We also run the JDO2/JPA1 TCKs before each release to provide extra checks to reduce the chance of regressions. The process for reporting issues is defined below :-

1. Check your input classes, MetaData and persistence code against the JDO/JPA spec and the DataNucleus documentation. The majority of situations are errors in input relative to what DataNucleus allows.
2. Search the DataNucleus Forum for a similar situation to see if someone else has had the same issue and maybe resolved it.
3. Try the latest Nightly Build. Things are usually fixed soon after being reported so the issue may no longer be an issue.
4. Search DataNucleus JIRA for an issue describing your situation. If there is one then you can always check the status of the issue and post against it in JIRA.
5. Start a thread on the DataNucleus Forum.
6. If there is nothing obvious incorrect in your situation and it happens in a released version of DataNucleus then you can raise an issue in DataNucleus JIRA. You should then create a testcase and attach it to the JIRA issue (using "Attach File" on the issue) - see below. Bugs can only be raised against released versions of DataNucleus. If you encounter a bug that only appears in SVN trunk then you should either report it against a JIRA issue related to that item in the current work-in-progress release, or otherwise report it to developers. This is since something can hardly be a bug if it hasn't been released yet

This guide can also be used for providing testcases that demonstrate the need for new features.