10. Reporting Bugs

Your bug reports play an essential role in making GCC reliable.

When you encounter a problem, the first thing to do is to see if it is already known. See section 9. Known Causes of Trouble with GCC. If it isn't known, then you should report the problem.

Reporting a bug may help you by bringing a solution to your problem, or it may not. (If it does not, look in the service directory; see 11. How To Get Help with GCC.) In any case, the principal function of a bug report is to help the entire community by making the next version of GCC work better. Bug reports are your contribution to the maintenance of GCC.

Since the maintainers are very overloaded, we cannot respond to every bug report. However, if the bug has not been fixed, we are likely to send you a patch and ask you to tell us whether it works.

In order for a bug report to serve its purpose, you must include the information that makes for fixing the bug.

10.1 Have You Found a Bug?		Have you really found a bug?
10.2 Where to Report Bugs		Where to send your bug report.
10.3 How to Report Bugs		How to report a bug effectively.
10.4 The gccbug script		You can use a bug reporting tool.
10.5 Sending Patches for GCC		How to send a patch for GCC.
9. Known Causes of Trouble with GCC		Known problems.
11. How To Get Help with GCC		Where to ask for help.