Suggestion: populate INFO name in warning "INFO tag id=146"

Open

#1,996 opened on Feb 20, 2026 4 comments 0 reactions 1 assignee View on GitHub

@daviesrob is already working on this.

Since Apr 30, 2026.

Assessment

This issue has not been assessed yet.

Description

At the moment, some errors look like:

... Invalid BCF, the INFO tag id=146 is too large at ....

Would it be possible to look up the tagID and replace it with a more human readable string of the name? That would help people debug issues more easily.

An example where a better warning may have helped someone else samtools/bcftools#1532

Thanks!

Dominant language: C
Stars: 950
Forks: 475
Avg merge: 3d 13h
Merged PRs (30d): 11

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
Open a pull request that references the issue number.

More from samtools/htslib

[Bug]hts_getline() aborts on a bzip2-compressed input: hts_detect_format() classifies BZh-prefixed data as bzip2_compression, but the line reader only handles no_compression/gzip/bgzf and hits default: abort() (CWE-617) Open

Difficulty 3/5 1-2 days Newbie friendliness 74/100

samtools/htslib#2091 · Opened Sep 15, 2026
[Bug]Signed integer overflow in bcf_get_version() on the VCF header path: the version string ##fileformat=VCFv4.<huge> drives ver += tmp * 1000 past LONG_MAX (UBSan trap @ vcf.c:186, CWE-190) Open

Difficulty 3/5 1-2 days Newbie friendliness 76/100

samtools/htslib#2088 · 2 comments · Opened Sep 15, 2026
CI testing for signed-off-by commits Open

samtools/htslib#2014 · 1 assignee · Opened May 20, 2026
tabix performance Open

samtools/htslib#1949 · 1 comment · 1 assignee · Opened Sep 2, 2025
hts_idx_t file query API Open

samtools/htslib#1902 · 4 comments · 1 assignee · Opened Apr 2, 2025

All issues in samtools/htslib

Similar issues

[adam] AdamNet network read doesn't cap to MAX_ADAM_PACKET_LEN, overflows client receive buffers Open

Difficulty 2/5 1-3 hours Newbie friendliness 88/100

FujiNetWIFI/fujinet-firmware#1649 · 2 comments · Opened Sep 20, 2026
Some Grotto Gossip Stone Names Incorrect Open

Difficulty 2/5 1-3 hours Newbie friendliness 68/100

HarbourMasters/Shipwright#7229 · Opened Sep 20, 2026
Error while building from source Open

Difficulty 2/5 1-3 hours Newbie friendliness 72/100

riscv-software-src/riscv-isa-sim#2435 · 1 comment · Opened Sep 20, 2026
tools/mkimage: dumpimage rejects valid legacy uImages after custom magic patch Open

bug Self Built Image SNAPSHOT Supported Device target/ramips

Difficulty 2/5 1-3 hours Newbie friendliness 88/100

openwrt/openwrt#25287 · Opened Sep 20, 2026
Android: 1.22.2 regression — DPAD_CENTER is unconditionally remapped to ENTER, breaking devices that use it as a real joypad bind (e.g. TV remotes) Open

Difficulty 2/5 1-3 hours Newbie friendliness 76/100

libretro/RetroArch#19593 · 1 comment · Opened Sep 20, 2026

More C issues