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Reporting problems
I try my best to assist in solving most problems encountered regarding this application. To be able to better manage the time and resources available, I kindly ask to follow this set of guidelines when it comes to interacting with this repository.
Make sure the "problem" you are facing is actually a problem with ExplorerPatcher. The easiest way to do this is to check whether you can reproduce the issue on a clean Windows 11 install, for example, in a virtual machine. If that's not possible to evaluate, at least disable all other programs, shell extensions, themes etc that might interfere, or at the very least make sure to specify their presence when filling the report. The information is VERY useful in order to quickly and reliably asses the problem.
Make sure the "problem" you are facing is indeed a "problem", not some feature/quirk you may simply have missed (sometimes because of skipping the advice of consulting the documentation, or at the very least the README). The documentation is provided to help you and also to avoid opening tickets for the most basic things in the world. PLEASE take a bit of time to get familiar with the program and read the provided docs.
PLEASE describe things in detail. Refrain from generic titles (i.e. "does not work", "broken" #486, "thing is buggy" #605) or useless 1-line descriptions (that sometimes just repeat the title, e.g. #621). The better documented the initial report, the easier it is to develop a fix for it. Badly formatted tickets just take time and attention from the real problems and add no value.
Useful things to include:
- Windows build number
- ExplorerPatcher version
- Relevant third party programs/tweaks used (for example, OpenShell, Start11, StartAllBack, 7+ Taskbar Tweaker etc)
VERY useful things to include:
- The exact commit of the ExplorerPatcher release you are using
- If you report a crash, a crash dump is VERY useful. Use these instructions to enable full crash dumps on your Windows install, and then submit
explorer's crash dump correlated with the problem you are reporting.
Useless things to include:
- Personal feelings, especially if not even remotely based on some fact
- Windows Event Log output, besides the crashing module. The information there is 99% of the times useless, being too generic. Instead, use these to enable and collect full crash dumps.
ExplorerPatcher is a collaborative, open development project that relies on user contributions as well. For simple issues, like typos in the docs, small and relevant changes in the code etc, you can fork the repository, make the change there and submit a pull request for review directly. This is often preferable, if documented well, than asking for the change from me in a new thread.
Open a new thread in Discussions. There, the community or myself (knowledgeable people) can help assist you and hopefully a solution is determined.
DO NOT OPEN A THREAD IN ISSUES. PLEASE DON'T DO THAT. THE ISSUES SECTION IS INTENDED FOR DEVELOPERS TO TRACK ACTUAL ISSUES, PROBLEMS, BUGS, WORK IN PROGRESS FEATURES OF THE APPLICATION. THE ONLY REASON THIS SECTION IS OPEN TO THE GENERAL PUBLIC IS BECAUSE SOME DESIGN GENIUS AT GITHUB/MICROSOFT DECIDED NOT TO OFFER AN OPTION TO RESTRICT THIS AND CONSTANTLY IGNORED THE COMMUNITY ASKING THIS FOR YEARS.
Even if you think something belongs to the Issues section, or you are 100% sure you found a bug, don't open a ticket there. Instead, raise a new thread in Discussions. I will come, evaluate it, and when I confirm it, I will manually promote it as an issue. This way, I can keep that section focused, containing items of interest for the development of this application. Otherwise, things become a mess, as is the case with tons of projects on GitHub which simply have gotten their issues tracker out of control, filled with duplicate support requests, reports etc. Some developers end up in a point of having nothing else to do to get some use out of it then to close all issues, no matter their state, and start fresh, as was the case recently with the issues section of the TaskbarX project. Of course, that's a huge stress for the developer and introduces the risk of getting real issues lost in a sea of invalid reports.
Unfortunately, this happens to a degree in ExplorerPatcher still: at the beginning of 2022, there are approximately 250 issues all time. Out of those, 50 or so are marked "fixed" with no open issues. That suggests that 20-30% of the raised tickets are actually valid. The rest are simply duplicates or invalid tickets (support tickets, feature requests etc). That's not good.
TL;DR DO NOT OPEN TICKETS IN ISSUES. Open them in Discussions.
What about general questions, questions about the functionality of ExplorerPatcher or feature requests?
Those are welcome as well, use Discussions to address them.
Please note that issues/discussions not adhering to these guidelines will most probably be ignored and may simply be closed/deleted without any explanation as a reply.
Despite having the possibility to do so, I vouch not to edit or alter and third party reply or post on these forums.