UK TeX FAQ -- question label latexbug

### 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 Maintenance is only available for sufficiently up-to-date versions of LaTeX — if your LaTeX is more than two versions out of date, the bug reporting mechanisms may reject your report.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.