Gardening/BugOfTheMonth

Bug Of The Month (BOTM) is an effort to get developers from all KDE projects to investigate annoying, but (long) unresolved issues in KDE software.

Those bugs often raise endless discussions from frustrated users about how KDE developers do not care. The truth is, most developers are not even aware of them, because the issues do not happen on their system. KDE Developers also usually do not read bug tickets for projects they do not maintain. Getting attention of all developers is one part of the effort, by announcing one selected bug on Planet KDE and the KDE developer mailing list monthly.

Sometimes the code in question does no longer have a maintainer, or the current maintainer does not have the time or expertise to address the bug. Sometimes the bug is actually caused by underlying software components, but the KDE code is the only test case developers have, making the bug hard to investigate. Finding someone able to propose changes to underlying components is an additional goal.

BOTM is similar to the "Junior-Jobs" initiative from the KDE Bug Team. But in contrast to Junior-Jobs, which are easy to solve even for newcomers, BOTM bugs are complex to investigate or solve, are buried in hard-to-understand code or in code which has long been unmaintained. They sometimes require deep understanding of underlying components, or require discussion with upstream developers or with distribution packagers. Call them "Senior-Jobs" if you like.

How to participate

Every KDE developer is invited to read through the Bugzilla ticket for the current Bug of the Month. Add feedback, investigate, coordinate with other developers, and even propose a code change! If you have ideas to solve the issue, create a merge request at invent.kde.org.

Former Bugs of the Month

Month	Status	Bug Number and Title	Links
1/2023	Fixed	Bug #391905: No way to delete Look & Feel themes from the KCM	Merge Request: [1]
02/2015	Fixed	Bug #309193: Keyboard shortcuts doesn't work if non-english keyboard layout is set before english one
01/2015	Fixed	Bug #271934: kded4 process grows on memory usage (possible leak)
12/2014	Fixed	Bug #288410: kde deamon crash on wakeup
11/2014	Fixed	Bug #324975: Volume gets restored to 100% after each knotify event	Review Requests: [2] [3]

Ideas for future Bugs of the Month

Plasma + KWin

• No easy way to synchronize wallpaper across desktop(s), lock screen, and login screen: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=367666
• plasmashell does not use Qt scaling on X11, leading to many visual bugs with >100% scale factor https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=356446
• Running "sudo udevadm trigger -s input" resets touchpad configuration; can happen after system upgrade: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=414559
• Lock screen does not expose power actions: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=336369
• KWin does not remember window sizes or positions, leaving it up to apps which almost never do the right thing: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15329
• All of KWin's window placement modes should cascade windows that would otherwise completely overlap the one below: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=58063

System Settings

• User needs to restart Plasma session to apply a new cursor theme to the whole system: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=382604
• System Settings sidebar does not permit keyboard navigation: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=404065

Apps

• Kate doesn't do smooth pixel-by-pixel scrolling with touchpads: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=378275
• Dolphin's new "externally-called folder opens in a new tab" feature isn't activity and virtual desktop aware: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=408919
• Okular doesn't let you save or re-save a file that was edited or deleted while open: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=402017
• Okular doesn't honor print options when printing to PDF: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=252596
• Okular's PDF form filling feature is buggy:
  • No basic PDF form actions: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=382860
  • Doesn't calculate in forms that use JavaScript: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=271728
  • Inline submit button doesn't work: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=382863
  • Radio buttons often don't work right: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=382857
  • Marks in checkboxes often don't render correctly: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=335033
  • Doesn't show dropdown menus correctly: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=382858
  • Some filled-in form values don't print: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=343834
  • Some filled-in form values are transformed into "undefined" after saving and re-opening the document: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=401067
• Okular should list and highlight all found instances of searched-for words: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=377487

Frameworks

• PolKit support in KIO: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=179678 (Patch in need of love: https://phabricator.kde.org/D7563)
• File Transfer Dialog says that the transfer is finished before the kernel has actually finished it: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=281270