It is crucial to provide Minimal Complete Verifiable Examples (MCVE) when seeking help or troubleshooting issues. By offering a concise and clear example, you increase the likelihood of receiving timely and accurate assistance. It allows others to easily understand the problem and provide solutions efficiently. Always strive to provide an MCVE to ensure productive collaboration and effective problem-solving.Reporting a bug takes time, and trust me, every vendor appreciates your reporting of a bug! Your voice counts as many voices, for all the other customers of a product who do not want to or cannot take the time to report the same bug are numerous.

Importance of an MCVE

Having said so, reporting a bug can be a tedious exercise. For both parties, the one reporting the bug and the one receiving it. There are extremely simple bugs, such as typos in documentation. They can be easily pointed to and just as easily be fixed. There are much trickier bugs, such as concurrency issues in complicated project setups. They take time to reproduce. This is why an MCVE (Minimal Complete Verifiable Example) is so useful. The linked stack overflow page explains why it is so useful to answer questions. But the same arguments apply when reporting a bug.

Creating a Minimal Example

And that’s where the tricky part starts. It isn’t easy to create an example that is:

Minimal

Your real-world application code is huge. You cannot dump the entirety of it to the vendor for various reasons. And the vendor cannot look through it all to try to reproduce it. So, the problem has to be isolated into an example of minimal scope, with no unnecessary additional functionality. That’s hard too because your project has been set up months or years ago. You don’t want to spend too much time setting up a new project.

Complete

When reducing the problem to a minimal one, we’re tempted to just describe it in prose. But that can be difficult as well because prose is hardly complete. It’s difficult to describe a problem when it would be quite easy to show the code. But that brings us back to the minimal part. We want to show only the relevant code, not all of it.

Verifiable

Ultimately, the ideal example can be used by the vendor to reproduce the problem because once that’s possible, the vendor can start debugging it and finding the right spots to fix quite easily. Otherwise, it’s just guessing and going back and forth with the reporter, just to write more prose. That’s tiring on both sides.

How to create an effective MCVE

Creating an efficient MCVE requires careful consideration and attention to detail. Here are some guidelines to help you create a good example:

Use the right tools

To create an MCVE, you can make use of tools like the jOOQ code generator and JUnit tests. These tools provide a structured and standardized approach to creating minimal examples. Additionally, consider utilizing lightweight markdown languages like Markdown or CommonMark to format and present your MCVE documentation.

Fork and modify on GitHub

To make it easier for vendors to reproduce your issue, provide your MCVE as a forkable repository on GitHub. This allows them to modify the code directly and test different scenarios. By sharing your code in a collaborative manner, you increase the chances of a successful bug resolution.

Start with the basics

Begin by identifying the essential components of your problem. Strip away any unnecessary complexity or dependencies that are unrelated to the issue. Your goal is to create a concise and focused example that highlights the bug clearly.

Document step-by-step instructions

In addition to the code, include detailed instructions on how to reproduce the issue. Document each step and provide any relevant inputs or configurations. Clear instructions enhance the verifiability of your MCVE, making it easier for vendors to follow and understand.

Test your MCVE

Before submitting your MCVE, thoroughly test it to ensure that it reproduces the problem accurately. Verify that the bug can be observed consistently using your example. This step is crucial for the vendor to have confidence in the MCVE and locate the issue efficiently.

Reporting a bug can be a challenging task, but with the use of MCVE, it becomes much easier. Remember to create a minimal, complete, and verifiable example that accurately represents the problem you are facing. Use tools and techniques like the jOOQ code generator and JUnit test to enhance the example's clarity and ease of reproduction. By providing a well-crafted MCVE, you contribute to the overall quality of the product and improve the experience for all users.