What is the customary way of sharing a code snippet to illustrate a reported bug on GitHub?

Question

I reported a bug on GitHub, now I'm asked for files, but there's no way to attach them to the raised issue (e.g. on Launchpad you can attach file to a bug report, but on GitHub there's only option to attach pictures).

I've read the issues section of the GitHub FAQ, but didn't find anything sufficiently illuminating. It seems like a novice user is implicitly directed by the site somewhere, but where?

Should I just create a repository and put all the requested snippets and output files there? Or should I just email the files to the project's maintainer? What I'm asking here boils down to this: what people do usually?

Answer 1

If you are pointing to specific lines in the code base, you can use line links to deep-link into the code. (You should pick a specific commit and not just point to master as those links might become outdated if the code changes.)

If you just want to put up some sample code that you created, that is a perfect use for Github Gists. These can even be cloned and updated like a regular repo, but are much more lightweight.

If you have code that can be demonstrated in a browser, use JSFiddle or similar to create something people can see and interact with.

Bonus: If you are trying to demonstrate performance issues in JavaScript, you can use jsPerf to write an example test.

Answer 2

Many projects hosted on github have some infrastructure for testing, i.e. some input files and expected output (e.g. fish-shell has a tests/ directory) You could patch the software (i.e. fork it then make a pull request) to add an additional test case illustrating the bug.

You should also contact some of the main authors, they probably will be happy to get a bug report .... And you could report some issue (see this example)

At last, if you find a bug and are able to correct it, you fork the repo, patch it, and make a pull request.