How to report issues

If, despite studying the documentation and tutorials, you're experiencing strange behavior, this page is here to tell you what to do in such a situation. First of all, if you think there's a problem, just saying it doesn't work won't help us finding a solution. We're not soothsayers and need information to identify the problem and devise a solution. So it's important that you tell us what you were doing at the time the problem occurred, what operating system you're using, what version of Siril you're using and most importantly logs!

Check changelogs and bug trackers

First of all, if you find a bug in Siril, it may already have been reported (sometimes literally dozens of times). We therefore ask you to check first, for example by looking at changelogs, or tickets that have already been opened, and even closed.

Send us useful information

As mentioned in the introduction, we need useful information to help solve the problem:

  1. What operating system you're using? Because Siril can behave very differently on Windows, Linux or macOS, we need to know this information. Please be as precise as possible.

  2. Which version of Siril do you use? And how did you get it? Package downlaoded on the website? Through a third party? Compiled by yourself? Here again, please, be as precise as possible.

  3. Sometimes it's useful to share screenshots. However, please DO NOT TAKE YOUR SCREENSHOTS WITH YOUR SMARTPHONE - it's illegible. Your operating system is capable of making screenshots very easily (Google can help you with this) and Siril also offers such a feature (the button with the camera). Finally, the desired formats are image formats: jpg, bmp or png, but absolutely not pdf.

  4. Send us logs. Ideally, we prefer English logs! Just go to Siril preferences and change the language to English in the User Interface tab. Also, There are two types of logs: the one displayed in the Siril console, which describes the steps performed by the software and can help us debug, and the internal logs that are visible when Siril is run from the command line:

    • The former are very useful in most cases, and can be exported very easily using the button at the bottom right of them. This creates a file that can easily be sent to us.

    • However, when the software crashes (i.e. suddenly closes without warning), you need to start Siril from the command line, trying to reproduce the crash and retrieve the logs. Here, the method depends on the operating system.

      • Microsoft Windows: Open a cmd window (type cmd in Windows Search bar) and type the following:

        "C:\Program Files\Siril\bin\siril.exe" 2>&1 >output.log

        This will save the file output.log to the folder where the terminal was started (in most cases in %USERPROFILE% folder).

      • macOS: If you've installed Siril in the Applications folder, as is generally recommended, then start by opening the Terminal application from the Utilities folder within Applications, then copy and paste the following line:

        /Applications/Siril.app/Contents/MacOS/siril > ~/Desktop/output.log 2>&1

        After the crash, the logs will be available on the desktop in the file output.log.

      • GNU/Linux: Simply start Siril in a terminal. Usually, the binary is located in the $PATH variable, in which case type:

        siril > output.log 2>&1

        is all you need to get the logs redirected in the file output.log. This will save the file output.log to the folder where the terminal was started

  5. Send us your pic. If you find your image strange, don't hesitate to share it with us, usually in FITS format. It's always more interesting than a screenshot. To do this, you need to use a large file exchange service. There are lots of them, and we can suggest WeTransfer, for example. In that case, upload your data to WeTransfer and get a download link to share.

How to contact us?

There are several ways to contact us and report a bug. The easiest is to find us on the forum. But it is also possible to open a ticket on our gitlab repository. In this case, please check first that the same ticket has not already been opened. It may even have been closed because it has been resolved, in which case, a short description with a ticket number will be shown in the Changelog. To visualize the ticket (even a closed one) and confirm you are, or not, experiencing the same issue, go to the address https://gitlab.com/free-astro/siril/-/issues/XXXX with XXXX the ticket number.