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 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 Bug Criteria, 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 details about submitting such changes.