Sometimes you will encounter a bug in Emacs. Although we cannot promise we can or will fix the bug, and we might not even agree that it is a bug, we want to hear about bugs you encounter in case we do want to fix them.
To make it possible for us to fix a bug, you must report it. In order to do so effectively, you must know when and how to do it.
If Emacs executes an illegal instruction, or dies with an operating system error message that indicates a problem in the program (as opposed to something like “disk full”), then it is certainly a bug.
If Emacs updates the display in a way that does not correspond to what is in the buffer, then it is certainly a bug. If a command seems to do the wrong thing but the problem corrects itself if you type C-l, it is a case of incorrect display updating.
Taking forever to complete a command can be a bug, but you must make certain that it was really Emacs’s fault. Some commands simply take a long time. Type C-g and then C-h l to see whether the input Emacs received was what you intended to type; if the input was such that you know it should have been processed quickly, report a bug. If you don’t know whether the command should take a long time, find out by looking in the manual or by asking for assistance.
If a command you are familiar with causes an Emacs error message in a case where its usual definition ought to be reasonable, it is probably a bug.
If a command does the wrong thing, that is a bug. But be sure you know for certain what it ought to have done. If you aren’t familiar with the command, or don’t know for certain how the command is supposed to work, then it might actually be working right. Rather than jumping to conclusions, show the problem to someone who knows for certain.
Finally, a command’s intended definition may not be best for editing with. This is a very important sort of problem, but it is also a matter of judgment. Also, it is easy to come to such a conclusion out of ignorance of some of the existing features. It is probably best not to complain about such a problem until you have checked the documentation in the usual ways, feel confident that you understand it, and know for certain that what you want is not available. If you are not sure what the command is supposed to do after a careful reading of the manual, check the index and glossary for any terms that may be unclear. If you still do not understand, this indicates a bug in the manual. The manual’s job is to make everything clear. It is just as important to report documentation bugs as program bugs.
If the online documentation string of a function or variable disagrees with the manual, one of them must be wrong, so report the bug.
When you decide that there is a bug, it is important to report it and to report it in a way which is useful. What is most useful is an exact description of what commands you type, starting with the shell command to run Emacs, until the problem happens. Always include the version number of Emacs that you are using; type M-x emacs-version to print this.
The most important principle in reporting a bug is to report facts, not hypotheses or categorizations. It is always easier to report the facts, but people seem to prefer to strain to posit explanations and report them instead. If the explanations are based on guesses about how Emacs is implemented, they will be useless; we will have to try to figure out what the facts must have been to lead to such speculations. Sometimes this is impossible. But in any case, it is unnecessary work for us.
For example, suppose that you type C-x C-f /glorp/baz.ugh RET, visiting a file which (you know) happens to be rather large, and Emacs prints out ‘I feel pretty today’. The best way to report the bug is with a sentence like the preceding one, because it gives all the facts and nothing but the facts.
Do not assume that the problem is due to the size of the file and say, “When I visit a large file, Emacs prints out ‘I feel pretty today’.” This is what we mean by “guessing explanations”. The problem is just as likely to be due to the fact that there is a ‘z’ in the file name. If this is so, then when we got your report, we would try out the problem with some “large file”, probably with no ‘z’ in its name, and not find anything wrong. There is no way in the world that we could guess that we should try visiting a file with a ‘z’ in its name.
Alternatively, the problem might be due to the fact that the file starts with exactly 25 spaces. For this reason, you should make sure that you inform us of the exact contents of any file that is needed to reproduce the bug. What if the problem only occurs when you have typed the C-x a l command previously? This is why we ask you to give the exact sequence of characters you typed since starting to use Emacs.
You should not even say “visit a file” instead of C-x C-f unless you know that it makes no difference which visiting command is used. Similarly, rather than saying “if I have three characters on the line,” say “after I type RET A B C RET C-p,” if that is the way you entered the text.
If you are not in Fundamental mode when the problem occurs, you should say what mode you are in.
If the manifestation of the bug is an Emacs error message, it is
important to report not just the text of the error message but a backtrace
showing how the Lisp program in Emacs arrived at the error. To make the
backtrace, you must execute the Lisp expression
(setq debug-on-error t) before the error happens (that is to
say, you must execute that expression and then make the bug happen). This
causes the Lisp debugger to run (see Lisp Debug). The debugger’s
backtrace can be copied as text into the bug report. This use of the
debugger is possible only if you know how to make the bug happen again. Do
note the error message the first time the bug happens, so if you can’t make
it happen again, you can report at least that.
Check whether any programs you have loaded into the Lisp world, including
your init file, set any variables that may affect the functioning of
Emacs. See Init File. Also, see whether the problem happens in a
freshly started Emacs without loading your init file (start Emacs with
the -q switch to prevent loading the init file). If the problem
does not occur then, it is essential that we know the contents of
any programs that you must load into the Lisp world in order to cause
the problem to occur.
If the problem does depend on an init file or other Lisp programs that are not part of the standard Emacs system, then you should make sure it is not a bug in those programs by complaining to their maintainers first. After they verify that they are using Emacs in a way that is supposed to work, they should report the bug.
If you can tell us a way to cause the problem without visiting any files, please do so. This makes it much easier to debug. If you do need files, make sure you arrange for us to see their exact contents. For example, it can often matter whether there are spaces at the ends of lines, or a newline after the last line in the buffer (nothing ought to care whether the last line is terminated, but tell that to the bugs).
The easy way to record the input to Emacs precisely is to write a dribble file; execute the Lisp expression:
(open-dribble-file "~/dribble")
using Meta-ESC or from the ‘*scratch*’ buffer just after starting Emacs. From then on, all Emacs input will be written in the specified dribble file until the Emacs process is killed.
For possible display bugs, it is important to report the terminal type
(the value of environment variable TERM), the complete termcap entry
for the terminal from /etc/termcap (since that file is not identical
on all machines), and the output that Emacs actually sent to the terminal.
The way to collect this output is to execute the Lisp expression:
(open-termscript "~/termscript")
using Meta-ESC or from the ‘*scratch*’ buffer just after starting Emacs. From then on, all output from Emacs to the terminal will be written in the specified termscript file as well, until the Emacs process is killed. If the problem happens when Emacs starts up, put this expression into your init file so that the termscript file will be open when Emacs displays the screen for the first time. See Init File. Be warned: it is often difficult, and sometimes impossible, to fix a terminal-dependent bug without access to a terminal of the type that stimulates the bug.