Reporting a LaTeX bug
The LaTeX team supports LaTeX, and will deal with
bona fide bug reports. Note that the LaTeX team does
not deal with contributed packages — just the software that
is part of the LaTeX distribution itself: LaTeX and the
“required” packages.
Furthermore, you need to be slightly
careful to produce a bug report that is usable by the team. The steps
are:
1. Are you still using current LaTeX? Maintenance is only
available for sufficiently up-to-date versions of LaTeX — if your
LaTeX is more than two versions out of date, the bug reporting
mechanisms may reject your report.
2. Has your bug already been reported? Browse the
LaTeX bugs database,
to find any earlier instance of your bug. In many cases, the database
will list a work-around.
3. Prepare a
“minimum” file that exhibits the problem.
Ideally, such a file should contain no contributed packages — the
LaTeX team as a whole takes no responsibility for such packages (if
they’re supported at all, they’re supported by their authors). The
“minimum” file should be self-sufficient: if a member of the team
runs it in a clean directory, on a system with no contributed
packages, it should replicate your problem.
4. Run your file through LaTeX: the bug
system needs the .log
file that this process creates.
5. Connect to the
latex bugs processing web page
and enter details of your bug — category, summary and full
description, and the two important files (source and log file).
The personal details are not optional: the members of the
LaTeX team may need to contact to discuss the bug with you, or to
advise you of a work-around. Your details will not appear in the
public view of the database.