VMD-L Mailing List

From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Mon Mar 15 2004 - 14:09:51 CST

Dear VMD-L,
  Since we have a fresh batch of new people asking questions about
VMD and doing new exciting things with scripting, structure building,
etc, I thought I'd send out a little note that I hope will provide
guidance in asking good questions, and providing better bug reports
when you encounter problems using VMD.

Anything that reduces the amount of email I get translates directly into
more new features in VMD, fewer bugs, and better documentation!!!

In general, whenever you ask questions about why something doesn't work
the way you expect it to with VMD, we need certain minimal information,
in decreasing likelihood of importance:
  1) What version of VMD you are using.
     (for example "the SOLARIS2_64 version of VMD 1.8.2")
     I know that many of you are using the latest and greatest version of
     VMD at any given time, but it saves me a lot of time if you explicitly
     say what version you're using when you ask questions. There are so
     many things to consider when problems are reported, just narrowing
     down which version of the code is being run can save me a lot of time,
     email, and guesswork if its stated clearly up-front. Including the
     platform is also very helpful since many bugs are actually unique to
     a single platform.

  2) A detailed sequence of commands or GUI selections that trigger the
     problem, confusion etc. In most cases this can be generated
     semi-automatically via the "logfile" command.

  3) Example files that exercise the problem. VMD is a fairly mature
     program now, so most bugs that occur don't occur universally, and only
     occur in very narrow cases, often specific to a particular structure or
     a particular type of file (for example a bug in a file reader plugin)
     and so these bugs are difficult to track down without a matching
     test case. As bugs are reported and solved, we keep all of these files
     for use in future VMD testing, so its very helpful when people can provide
     us example files that expose a problem.

Beyond these 3 major items, our information needs are very problem
and operating system dependent, and so they necessitate further email
exchanges in order to find out what we need.

If people make sure to provide us with at least item 1), and ideally
items 2) and 3), along with bug reports and/or questions, then it will
save me a tremendous amount of time answering these questions, and
that will result in a better program since I'll spend more time coding
and less time emailing.

Thanks!
  John Stone
  vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu 

-- 
NIH Resource for Macromolecular Modeling and Bioinformatics
Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
University of Illinois, 405 N. Mathews Ave, Urbana, IL 61801
Email: johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu                 Phone: 217-244-3349              
  WWW: http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~johns/      Fax: 217-244-6078