Chapter 43. Reporting Bugs

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A patch for the bug does help us if it is a good one. But do not omit the necessary information, such

as the test case, on the assumption that a patch is all we need. We might see problems with your

patch and decide to fix the problem another way, or we might not understand it at all.

Sometimes with a program as complicated as

as

it is very hard to construct an example that will

make the program follow a certain path through the code. If you do not send us the example, we

will not be able to construct one, so we will not be able to verify that the bug is fixed.

And if we cannot understand what bug you are trying to fix, or why your patch should be an

improvement, we will not install it. A test case will help us to understand.

A guess about what the bug is or what it depends on.

Such guesses are usually wrong. Even we cannot guess right about such things without first using

the debugger to find the facts.