54 Reporting Bugs
If you think you have found a bug in Emacs, please report it. We
cannot promise to fix it, or always to agree that it is a bug, but we
certainly want to hear about it. The same applies for new features
you would like to see added. This section will help you to determine
whether you found a bug, and if so, construct an effective bug report.
The general procedure when you find something that could be a bug is
as follows:
- See if what you found is a known problem or a bug that was already
reported and/or fixed. See Reading Existing Bug Reports and Known Problems, where you will find how
to look for known problems and bugs.
- If you are unsure whether the behavior you see is a bug, see When Is There a Bug, which tells what we consider as clear bugs in Emacs.
- Once you decide you found a bug, see Understanding Bug Reporting, which helps you in describing what you see in the most
efficient manner, making our job of reproducing the issue and
investigating it easier.
- Next, see Checklist for Bug Reports, where we
describe in detail how to submit a bug report and what information to
include in it. In a nutshell, you submit a bug report via electronic
mail using the Emacs command
report-emacs-bug, which assists
you in doing so. Submitting a bug report starts the process of
investigating and fixing the bug, where you will receive copies of
email messages discussing the bug, in which we might ask you to
provide more information, test possible fixes, etc.
-
If you think you may have found a security issue that needs to be
communicated privately, please contact the GNU Emacs maintainers
directly. See the file admin/MAINTAINERS in the Emacs
distribution for their contact details.
- Finally, if you want to propose specific changes to Emacs, whether to
fix a bug, add a new feature, or improve our documentation, please see
Sending Patches for GNU Emacs, for details about submitting such changes.