60.1 Reading Existing Bug Reports and Known Problems
Before reporting a bug, if at all possible please check to see if it
is already known about. Indeed, it may already have been fixed in a
later release of Emacs, or in the development version. Here is a list
of the main places you can read about known issues:
The etc/PROBLEMS file in the Emacs distribution; type C-h
C-p to read it. This file contains a list of particularly well-known
issues that have been encountered in compiling, installing and running
Emacs. Often, there are suggestions for workarounds and solutions.
Some additional user-level problems can be found in Bugs and problems.
The ‘bug-gnu-emacs’ mailing list (also available as the newsgroup
‘gnu.emacs.bug’). This is where you will find most Emacs bug
reports. You can read the list archives at
http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-gnu-emacs. If you
like, you can also subscribe to the list. Be aware that the sole
purpose of this list is to provide the Emacs maintainers with
information about bugs and feature requests. Reports may contain
fairly large amounts of data; spectators should not complain about
this.
The bug tracker at http://debbugs.gnu.org. From early 2008,
reports from the ‘bug-gnu-emacs’ list have been sent here. The
tracker contains the same information as the mailing list, just in a
different format. You may prefer to browse and read reports using the
tracker.
The ‘emacs-pretest-bug’ mailing list. This list is no longer
used, and is mainly of historical interest. At one time, it was used
for bug reports in development (i.e., not yet released) versions of
Emacs. You can read the archives for 2003 to mid 2007 at
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-pretest-bug/. From
late 2007 to mid 2008, the address was an alias for the
‘emacs-devel’ mailing list. From mid 2008 onwards, it has been
an alias for ‘bug-gnu-emacs’.
The ‘emacs-devel’ mailing list. Sometimes people report bugs to
this mailing list. This is not the main purpose of the list, however,
and it is much better to send bug reports to the bug list. You should
not feel obliged to read this list before reporting a bug.