Appendix C. Bugs and Bug Fixes
There are no perfect programs. GNU Emacs is very thoroughly debugged,
but it is certainly possible to find things that
don't work correctly.
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) welcomes problem reports. However,
they need to be real problem reports; simple differences of opinion
about how something should work are not bugs. If you think that a
certain command should work differently, remember that Emacs has been
around for a long time and has many users; it can't
be changed to satisfy a single user. (On the other hand, in most
cases, you could write some Lisp to change it yourself.) In the
GNU Emacs Manual, the FSF publishes some
excellent guidelines for reporting bugs, which we'll
summarize very quickly:
Before you report a bug, see if it's on the list of
known problems. You can view this list by typing C-h C-e. You most certainly have a bug if you run into some kind of system
error (Emacs dumps core, terminates with a segmentation fault,
crashes, hangs, or does something else antisocial). When reporting bugs, be as specific as possible. A few commands will
help you report exactly what was happening when things went awry.
C-h l (for view-lossage) reports the last 100 or so
keystrokes you made; M-x open-dribble-file
filename saves every keystroke you type in the
specified filename. The FSF discourages you from trying to interpret bugs in the bug
report. "I did thus-and-such and this
happened" is useful, particularly if the problem is
repeatable; "I think there's a
problem with font handling" doesn't
give any useful information at all. Always report which version of Emacs you are using. The command
M-x emacs-version gives you the
relevant information. Always report the contents of the file you were editing (if it makes
a difference), the contents of your .emacs file,
which mode you were in, and any Lisp libraries (custom or otherwise)
that you have to load in order to create the problem.
We will add one very important guideline:
Although we have taken every effort to write a book that is accurate,
we are far from perfect. With that in mind, please do
not cite this book as an authority when reporting a bug.
Although we haven't asked, the Free Software
Foundation would be completely justified in rejecting any bug reports
based on a third-party publication. If you suspect a bug, use the
GNU Emacs Manual or the help facility to find
out what the command that's giving you trouble is
really supposed to do. In doing so, you may find out that this book
is incorrect; if you do, please report the problem to
booktech@oreilly.com.
If you do have a bug to report, type M-x
report-emacs-bug to send it from within Emacs.
You'll be prompted for a subject line and dropped
into Emacs' interface for sending mail. If mail from
Emacs isn't set up properly, you can email
emacs-pretest-bug@gnu.org
using your preferred mail client. Be sure to include an
informative subject line that summarizes the problem.
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