7.1. Bug reporting

We encourage you to file bugs as you find them in Debian packages. In fact, Debian developers are often the first line testers. Finding and reporting bugs in other developers’ packages improves the quality of Debian.

Read the instructions for reporting bugs in the Debian bug tracking system.

Try to submit the bug from a normal user account at which you are likely to receive mail, so that people can reach you if they need further information about the bug. Do not submit bugs as root.

You can use a tool like reportbug 1 to submit bugs. It can automate and generally ease the process.

Make sure the bug is not already filed against a package. Each package has a bug list easily reachable at https://bugs.debian.org/packagename. Utilities like querybts 1 can also provide you with this information (and reportbug will usually invoke querybts before sending, too).

Try to direct your bugs to the proper location. When for example your bug is about a package which overwrites files from another package, check the bug lists for both of those packages in order to avoid filing duplicate bug reports.

For extra credit, you can go through other packages, merging bugs which are reported more than once, or tagging bugs fixed when they have already been fixed. Note that when you are neither the bug submitter nor the package maintainer, you should not actually close the bug (unless you secure permission from the maintainer).

From time to time you may want to check what has been going on with the bug reports that you submitted. Take this opportunity to close those that you can’t reproduce anymore. To find out all the bugs you submitted, you just have to visit https://bugs.debian.org/from:your-email-addr.