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Reporting bugs & requesting features

Found a bug, or want a feature? Phytograph has two buttons in the top-right of the Viewer toolbar — Report a Bug and Request a Feature — and matching items under Help → Report a Bug… / Request a Feature… in the menu bar.

How it works

Clicking either button opens a small dialog:

  1. Give your report a short Title.
  2. Add the Details — for a bug, what happened, what you expected, and the steps to reproduce it if you know them; for a feature, the problem you're trying to solve and how you imagine it working.
  3. For a bug report, leave Attach session logs ticked (it's on by default for bugs) if you'd like to include a log of what the app did this session — see Attaching logs below.

  4. Choose how to send it:

  5. I have a GitHub account — opens a pre-filled issue on the Phytograph GitHub repository in your browser. You'll be asked to sign in to GitHub if you aren't already. Review the pre-filled form and click Submit.

  6. Continue without a GitHub account — opens your email program with the report pre-filled, addressed to the Phytograph team. No account needed.

Either way, your title and details are carried over so you don't have to retype them.

What gets included

So that reports are easy to act on, Phytograph automatically attaches a small Environment block — the Phytograph version, backend version, the PyHelios and Helios (C++) engine versions, and your operating system. It's shown in the dialog ("Includes: …") and appears in the pre-filled issue/email, where you can review or edit it before sending. No other data from your scans or files is included.

Attaching logs

A bug is far easier to diagnose with the session log — a running record of what the app, its Python backend, and the viewer did while it was open (including any errors). Because GitHub issues and emails can't attach a file automatically, Phytograph helps you attach it by hand:

  1. With Attach session logs ticked, click your send button. Phytograph asks you where to save the log file (a phytograph-logs-…txt is suggested), writes it, and opens the folder with the file selected.
  2. Your browser/email opens with the report pre-filled — the report text notes the log file's name under a Session logs heading.
  3. Drag the saved phytograph-logs-…txt file from the folder into the GitHub issue (or attach it to the email) before submitting.

The log contains app, backend, and viewer messages plus version/OS information. It does not contain the contents of your scans or point clouds, but it may include file names and paths (which can contain your user name) for the files you opened. You can open it in any text editor to review — and edit — it before attaching. Untick the box if you'd rather not include it.

If the app crashes

Some failures are too severe for the normal interface to recover from on its own — the display engine can stop unexpectedly, or the Python compute backend can fail to restart. When that happens, Phytograph shows a crash dialog instead of leaving you with a blank window:

  • Reload — restarts the part that crashed in place and tries to bring the app back without a full relaunch. (Your imported data lives in memory and is lost in a crash, so you'll need to re-import after reloading.)
  • View Logs — writes the combined session log and opens the folder with it selected. This is the log that's actually useful for diagnosing the crash — not the cryptic system crash-dump files your operating system may also leave in a temporary folder.
  • Report — opens a pre-filled bug report (GitHub, or email if you have no GitHub account) with the crash details and the log already written for you to attach, exactly like the Attaching logs flow above.
  • Quit — closes Phytograph cleanly, shutting down the backend.

If a reload keeps crashing, use Report to send the log, then Quit and relaunch.

When the whole app closes unexpectedly

Some crashes take the entire application down at once — there's no chance to show a dialog while it's happening. Phytograph still notices: the next time you launch it, if the previous session didn't shut down cleanly, it shows a "closed unexpectedly" dialog with the same View Logs and Report options. When the operating system managed to capture a crash report, it's revealed alongside the log so you can attach both. You can dismiss this and keep working — it's just letting you know, and offering to help you report it.