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Testing Development Builds

If you don't know how to write code, make art or translate, you can still help us by testing the development version of Widelands.

If you can't compile Widelands yourself

If you wish to help with testing Widelands and do not know how to compile, you can still help us by downloading a development build and reporting any bugs you find.

If you can compile

If you know how to compile Widelands or think you can learn, you can help us with testing branches that haven't been included in the current development version yet.

Selecting a branch to test

You can find a list of branches that need testing in the Pull Requests section on Codeberg or GitHub. We will sometimes also ask for testing on the forums when we have bigger projects that need thorough testing, or if we're changing the design of something.

Getting the branch

Open a terminal and if you have't done so already, you will need to clone the repository:

git clone https://codeberg.org/wl/widelands.git

You can then enter the directory by calling cd widelands and switch to the branch by calling

git checkout <branchname>

More detailed explanations on how to use Git are available in our Gitprimer.

Compiling and running the branch

For testing, we will want to create a development build. These are the terminal commands that you would most typically run:

git checkout <branchname>
./compile.sh
./widelands

For more information on how to compile, see Building Widelands .

Testing the branch

Once you have finished compiling or installing your development build, it is time to do the actual testing.

Manual testing

Read the description of the change, then click on anything that you think might be affected in any order that you can think of - be creative. Depending on what the change is, you might also want to test both a single player and a multiplayer game and play with the settings. Some changes will also affect the tutorials, campaigns and scenario maps.

Hint: In debug builds, you can use the hotkey Ctrl-Shift-Backspace to enable cheating mode. This allows you to change the amount of wares and workers in buildings for easier creation of complex setups for testing. The features unlocked by this hotkey are not compatible with replays and network games though.

Automated testing and codecheck

We have an automated test suite that you can run with development builds. We have some checks that run over the code itself to make sure that it adheres to our code style. See Regressiontests on how to run these tests.

Reporting your findings

  • If we asked for testing on the forums, you can report your findings in the forum thread.
  • If you tested the master branch, best report the bug in our Issue Tracker Codeberg or GitHub. Search the issues first to make sure that it hasn't already been reported, and include the Widelands revision number. If you don't want to open an account on neither Codeberg nor GitHub, you can also tell us about the bug in the forums.
  • If you tested a branch that's undergoing code review, report your findings in the branch's Pull Request in the Pull Requests section on Codeberg or GitHub.
    • If everything has checked out, visit the "Files changed" tab and hit the green "Review changes" button. Write your comment, select "Approve" and submit your review.
    • If there are still problems, describe them in the "Conversation" section.

See also How to Write a Good Bug Report .

Tagged with: Development, help