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(libc.info)Reporting Bugs


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Reporting Bugs
==============

   There are probably bugs in the GNU C library.  There are certainly
errors and omissions in this manual.  If you report them, they will get
fixed.  If you don't, no one will ever know about them and they will
remain unfixed for all eternity, if not longer.

   It is a good idea to verify that the problem has not already been
reported.  Bugs are documented in two places: The file `BUGS' describes
a number of well known bugs and the bug tracking system has a WWW
interface at <http://www-gnats.gnu.org:8080/cgi-bin/wwwgnats.pl>.  The
WWW interface gives you access to open and closed reports.  The closed
reports normally include a patch or a hint on solving the problem.

   To report a bug, first you must find it.  Hopefully, this will be the
hard part.  Once you've found a bug, make sure it's really a bug.  A
good way to do this is to see if the GNU C library behaves the same way
some other C library does.  If so, probably you are wrong and the
libraries are right (but not necessarily).  If not, one of the libraries
is probably wrong.  It might not be the GNU library.  Many historical
Unix C libraries permit things that we don't, such as closing a file
twice.

   If you think you have found some way in which the GNU C library does
not conform to the ISO and POSIX standards (Note: Standards and
Portability), that is definitely a bug.  Report it!

   Once you're sure you've found a bug, try to narrow it down to the
smallest test case that reproduces the problem.  In the case of a C
library, you really only need to narrow it down to one library function
call, if possible.  This should not be too difficult.

   The final step when you have a simple test case is to report the bug.
Do this using the `glibcbug' script.  It is installed with libc, or if
you haven't installed it, will be in your build directory.  Send your
test case, the results you got, the results you expected, and what you
think the problem might be (if you've thought of anything).  `glibcbug'
will insert the configuration information we need to see, and ship the
report off to <bugs@gnu.org>.  Don't send a message there directly; it
is fed to a program that expects mail to be formatted in a particular
way.  Use the script.

   If you are not sure how a function should behave, and this manual
doesn't tell you, that's a bug in the manual.  Report that too!  If the
function's behavior disagrees with the manual, then either the library
or the manual has a bug, so report the disagreement.  If you find any
errors or omissions in this manual, please report them to the Internet
address <bug-glibc-manual@gnu.org>.  If you refer to specific sections
of the manual, please include the section names for easier
identification.


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