This document outlines what you need to know before creating tickets or creating pull requests.

• Issues, Tickets, however you may call them
• How to file a bug report
  • What should I do before submitting a bug report?
  • What should I include in a bug report?
  • Where can I find which version and branch I'm on?
  • Where can I find those log files you keep talking about?
  • Where can I find my browser's error console?
• Setting up a development environment
• Pull requests
• What do the branches mean?
• How OctoPrint is versioned
• On AI use when contributing to OctoPrint
• History
• Footnotes

Please read the following instructions fully and follow them. You can help the project tremendously this way: not only do you help the maintainers to address problems in a timely manner but also keep it possible for them to fix bugs, add new and improve on existing functionality instead of doing nothing but ticket management.

flowchart TD
    Choice{What's up?} -->|I need help/support/have questions or anything else| Community["`Please use the Community Forum or Discord, see help.octoprint.org`"]
    Choice -->|I want to report a bug| ReadBug("`Read and follow **How to file a bug report** below`")
    ReadBug --> Checklist("`**Checklist**:
    - Right location? Octo**Print**, not OctoPi, no wifi/cam issues, no third party plugins, no forks
    - Does the problem appear on the current version?
    - Does the problem appear in safe mode?
    - Is there no bug report yet for this problem?
    `")
    Checklist -->|This is a new bug| NewBug[Create a new bug report on GitHub using the corresponding form]
    Checklist -->|There already is an issue for this bug| AddMeToo[Add a comment with a systeminfo bundle and reproduction steps]
    Choice -->|I have a request for a feature, documentation, ...| NewFR[Create a new feature request on GitHub using the corresponding form]
    Choice -->|I want to brainstorm a pull request or other possible changes| Community
    style Community stroke:red
    style NewBug stroke:green
    style AddMeToo stroke:green
    style NewFR stroke:green
    style Checklist stroke:yellow

• Read the FAQ
• If you want to report a bug, read "How to file a bug report" below and use the provided bug reporting form. You do not need to do anything else with your ticket.
• If you want to post a feature request or a documentation request, add [Request] to your issue's title (e.g. [Request] Awesome new feature). A question on how to run/change/setup something is not what qualifies as a request here, use the community forum at community.octoprint.org for such support issues.
• If you are a developer that wants to brainstorm a pull request or possible changes to the plugin system, please get in touch on the community forum at community.octoprint.org.
• If you need support, have a question or some other reason that doesn't fit any of the above categories, the issue tracker is not the right place. Consult the community forum at community.octoprint.org instead.

No matter what kind of ticket you create, never mix two or more "ticket reasons" into one ticket: One ticket per bug, request, brainstorming thread please.

If you encounter an issue with OctoPrint, you are welcome to submit a bug report.

Before you do that for the first time though please take a moment to read the following section completely and also follow the instructions in the "new issue" form. Thank you! :)

1. Make sure you are at the right location. This is the bug tracker of the official version of OctoPrint, which is the 3D print server and corresponding web interface itself.

   OctoPrint doesn't manage your network connection or your webcam nor can it fix your printer not getting detected as a serial interface - if you have any kinds of problems with that, get in touch on the community forum.

   This is not the bug tracker of OctoPi, which is the preconfigured Raspberry Pi image including OctoPrint among other things - that one can be found here. If you have any kind of specific issue with how the OctoPi system is setup, go there please.

   This is also not the bug tracker of any OctoPrint Plugins you might have installed. Report any issues with those in their corresponding bug tracker (probably linked to from the plugin's homepage).

   Finally, this is also not the right bug tracker if you are running a forked version of OctoPrint. Seek help for such unofficial versions from the people maintaining them instead.

2. Please make sure to test out the current version of OctoPrint to see whether the problem you are encountering still exists, and test without any third-party plugins enabled to make sure it's not a misbehaving plugin causing the issue at hand. For that please restart OctoPrint in safe mode, either by selecting "Restart OctoPrint in safe mode" from the "System" menu, or by starting OctoPrint from the command line with octoprint serve --safe. Then try to reproduce your issue. Find out more about safe mode in the docs.

   You might also want to try the current development version of OctoPrint (if you aren't already). Refer to the FAQ for information on how to do this.

3. The problem still exists? Then please look through the existing tickets (use the search) to check if there already exists a report of the issue you are encountering. Sorting through duplicates of the same issue sometimes causes more work than fixing it. Take the time to filter through possible duplicates and be really sure that your problem definitely is a new one. Try more than one search query (e.g. do not only search for "timelapse" if you happen to run into an issue with your webcam, also search for "recording" etc). Do not only read the subject lines of tickets that look like they might be related, but also read the ticket itself!

   Very important: Please make absolutely sure that if you find a bug that looks like it is the same as your's, it actually behaves the same as your's. E.g. if someone gives steps to reproduce his bug that looks like your's, reproduce the bug like that if possible, and only add a "me too" if you actually can reproduce the same issue. Also provide all information like Systeminfo Bundle, additional logs & versions, different reproduction steps and whatever was additionally requested over the course of the ticket even if you "only" add to an existing ticket. The more information available regarding a bug, the higher the chances of reproducing and solving it. But "me too" on an actually unrelated ticket makes it more difficult due to on top of having to figure out the original problem there's now also a red herring interfering - so please be very diligent here!

If in doubt about any of the above - get in touch on the community forums instead of opening a ticket here. If you are actually running into a bug, we'll figure it out together there.

First of all make sure your use a descriptive title. "It doesn't work" and similar unspecific complaints are NOT descriptive titles.

Always use the bug reporting form for new bug reports.

When adding a "me too" to an existing bug report, always include a system info bundle as well, and provide your reproduction steps.

Please refer to this FAQ entry.

Please refer to this FAQ entry.

Please refer to this FAQ entry.

See How to open the Javascript Console in different browsers

See the corresponding chapter in the documentation. This also includes information on how to run the test suite and how to build the documentation, the bundled virtual printer plugin and OctoPrint's versioning and branching strategy.

1. If you want to add a new feature to OctoPrint, please always first consider if it wouldn't be better suited for a plugin. As a general rule of thumb, any feature that is only of interest to a small sub group should be moved into a plugin. If the current plugin system doesn't allow you to implement your feature as a plugin, please get in touch on the forums to get the discussion going on how best to solve this in OctoPrint's plugin system - maybe that's the actual PR you have been waiting for to contribute :)

2. If you plan to make any large or otherwise disruptive changes to the code or appearance, please get in touch on the forums first so that we can determine if it's a good time for your specific pull request. It might be that we're currently in the process of making heavy changes to the code locations you'd target as well, or your approach doesn't fit the general "project vision", and that would just cause unnecessary work and frustration for everyone or possibly get the PR rejected.

3. Create your pull request from a custom branch on your end (e.g. wip/my-new-feature)[1].

4. Create your pull request only against the dev branch. In case of big changes, get in touch first.

5. Create one pull request per feature/bug fix.

6. Make sure there are only relevant changes included in your PR. No changes to unrelated files, no additional files that don't belong (e.g. commits of your full virtual environment). Make sure your PR consists ideally of only one commit (use git's rebase and squash functionality).

7. Make sure you follow the current coding style. This means:

   • Spaces for indenting and alignment, indentation width 4.
   • English language (code, variables, comments, ...)
   • Comments where necessary: Tell why the code does something like it does it, structure your code
   • Following the general architecture
   • If your PR needs to make changes to the Stylesheets, change the .less files from which the CSS is compiled.
   • Make sure you do not add dead code (e.g. commented out left-overs from experiments).

8. Ensure your changes pass the existing unit tests. PRs that break those cannot be accepted. You can run the unit tests locally (after initial development environment setup with "develop" dependencies) by running

   pytest
   

   in the OctoPrint checkout folder. An automatic build workflow is also setup so that if the tests should fail, your PR will be marked accordingly.

9. Run the pre-commit check suite against your changes. You can run that (after initial development environment setup with "develop" dependencies) by running

   pre-commit run --hook-stage manual --all-files
   

   in the OctoPrint checkout folder. If you install the pre-commit hooks via pre-commit install (which you really should!) this will even be taken care of for you prior to committing.

   An automatic build workflow is in place that will run these checks - if they fail your PR will be marked accordingly.

10. Test your changes thoroughly. That also means testing with usage scenarios you don't normally use. If you only test with your printer, test with the virtual printer and vice versa. State in your pull request how you tested your changes. Ideally add unit tests - OctoPrint severely lacks in that department, but we are trying to change that, so any new code already covered with a test suite helps a lot!

11. In your pull request's description, state what your pull request does, as in, what feature does it implement, what bug does it fix. The more thoroughly you explain your intent behind the PR here, the higher the chances it will get merged fast. There is a template provided below that can help you here.

12. Don't forget to add yourself to the AUTHORS file :)

Template to use for Pull Request descriptions (should get pre-filled automatically):

<!--
Thank you for your interest in contributing to OctoPrint, it's
highly appreciated!

Please make sure you have read the "guidelines for contributing" as
linked just above this form, there's a section on Pull Requests in there
as well which contains important information.

As a summary, please make sure you have ticked all points on this
checklist:
-->

- [ ] You have read through `CONTRIBUTING.md`
- [ ] Your changes are not possible to do through a plugin and relevant
  to a large audience (ideally all users of OctoPrint)
- [ ] If your changes are large or otherwise disruptive: You have
  made sure your changes don't interfere with current development by
  talking it through with the maintainers, e.g. through a
  Brainstorming ticket
- [ ] Your PR targets OctoPrint's `dev` branch
- [ ] Your PR was opened from a custom branch on your repository
  (no PRs from your version of `main`, `bugfix`, `next` or `dev`
  please), e.g. `wip/my_new_feature` or `wip/my_bugfix`
- [ ] Your PR only contains relevant changes: no unrelated files,
  no dead code, ideally only one commit - rebase and squash your PR
  if necessary!
- [ ] If your changes include style sheets: You have modified the
  `.less` source files, not the `.css` files (those are generated
  with `lessc`)
- [ ] You have tested your changes (please state how!) - ideally you
  have added unit tests
- [ ] You have run the existing unit tests against your changes and
  nothing broke (`pytest`)
- [ ] You have run the included `pre-commit` suite against your changes
  and nothing broke (`pre-commit run --all-files`)
- [ ] You have added yourself to the `AUTHORS.md` file :)

<!--
Describe your PR further using the template provided below. The more
details the better!
-->

#### What does this PR do and why is it necessary?

#### How was it tested? How can it be tested by the reviewer?

#### Was any kind of genAI (ChatGPT, Copilot etc) involved in creating this PR?

#### Any background context you want to provide?

#### What are the relevant tickets if any?

#### Screenshots (if appropriate)

#### Further notes

<!--
Be advised that your PR will be checked automatically by CI. Should any of the CI
checks fail, you will be expected to fix them before your PR will be reviewed, so
keep an eye on it!
-->

See the corresponding chapter in the documentation.

See the corresponding chapter in the documentation.

What follows here are the guidelines for AI use when contributing to OctoPrint.

When we say "AI use", we mean all kinds of Generative AI based chatbots (including GitHub's Copilot!), coding and other such tools.

If you use an AI tool to create a bug report or other issue for OctoPrint (even GitHub's Copilot!) you must reveal this fact in your report.

If you find a problem, write the issue yourself using the provided issue form. If you struggle with language or phrasing, you can of course use any help with that that you want, but please make sure to write most of it yourself and don't just copy and paste an AI generated issue to the project. Those generated reports typically are too wordy and rarely to the point (in addition to the common fabricated details), and will in all likelihood nevertheless lack the information we actually need to be able to debug and fix your issue.

When contributing a pull request you always need to make sure that the proposal is good quality and a best effort that follows our guidelines. A basic rule of thumb is that if someone can spot that the contribution was made with the help of AI, you have more work to do.

We can accept code written with the help of AI into the project, but the code must still follow coding standards, be written clearly, be documented, feature test cases and adhere to all the normal requirements we have. You also must understand it yourself and be able to explain it to us - no "vibe coding" please.

Whatever kind of contribution you submit with your PR, be it code, documentation change, workflows, etc: If you prepared it with the help of an AI, you must reveal this fact in your PR!

• 2015-01-23: More guidelines for creating pull requests, support/questions redirected to Mailinglist/G+ community
• 2015-01-27: Added another explicit link to the FAQ
• 2015-07-07: Added step to add yourself to AUTHORS when creating a PR :)
• 2015-12-01: Heavily reworked to include examples, better structure and all information in one document.
• 2016-02-10: Added information about branch structure and versioning.
• 2016-02-16: Added requirement to add information from template to existing tickets as well, explained issue with "me too" red herrings.
• 2016-03-14: Some more requirements for PRs, and a PR template.
• 2016-06-08: New prerelease and rc branches explained.
• 2016-09-09: New rc/* branches explained.
• 2016-09-23: Some more work on "How to file a bug report" based on recent experiences
• 2017-01-25: Fixed a typo
• 2017-03-09: Allow PRs against maintenance branch for bugs in stable.
• 2017-03-10: Reproduce bugs in safe mode to make sure they are really caused by OctoPrint itself and not a misbehaving plugin.
• 2017-03-27: Added safe mode section to ticket template.
• 2017-11-22: Added note on how to run the unit tests
• 2018-03-15: Link to new community forum and some clarifications re bug reporting
• 2018-03-29: "Where to find version numbers" is now located on the FAQ
• 2018-10-18: Allow PRs against maintenance branch for improvements and small new features, suggest getting in touch on the forum for larger changes
• 2020-08-10: Update versioning scheme and PR instructions
• 2020-09-23: Move branch & versioning into development docs
• 2020-10-07: Introduce pre-commit
• 2021-02-04: Issue forms! \o/
• 2021-03-04: Correct issue forms link
• 2021-04-27: Systeminfo Bundles! \o/
• 2025-05-21: Guidelines regarding the use of AI
• 2025-09-03: Changes according to the new branching strategy

• [1] - If you are wondering why, the problem is that anything that you add to your PR's branch will also become part of your PR, so if you create a PR from your version of dev chances are high you'll add changes to the PR that do not belong to the PR.