1.4 Feedback

If you find problems with Org, or if you have questions, remarks, or ideas about it, please mail to the Org mailing list emacs-orgmode@gnu.org. If you are not a member of the mailing list, your mail will be reviewed by a moderator and then passed through to the list.

For bug reports, please provide as much information as possible, including the version information of Emacs (C-h v emacs-version <RET>) and Org (C-h v org-version <RET>), as well as the Org related setup in .emacs. If an error occurs, a backtrace can be very useful (see below on how to create one). Often a small example file helps, along with clear information about:

1. What exactly did you do?
2. What did you expect to happen?
3. What happened instead?

How to create a useful backtrace

If working with Org produces an error with a message you don't understand, you may have hit a bug. The best way to report this is by providing, in addition to what was mentioned above, a Backtrace. This is information from the built-in debugger about where and how the error occurred. Here is how to produce a useful backtrace:

1. Start a fresh Emacs or XEmacs, and make sure that it will load the original Lisp code in org.el instead of the compiled version in org.elc. The backtrace contains much more information if it is produced with uncompiled code. To do this, either rename org.elc to something else before starting Emacs, or ask Emacs explicitly to load org.el by using the command line

             emacs -l /path/to/org.el
        

2. Go to the Options menu and select Enter Debugger on Error (XEmacs has this option in the Troubleshooting sub-menu).
3. Do whatever you have to do to hit the error. Don't forget to document the steps you take.
4. When you hit the error, a *Backtrace* buffer will appear on the screen. Save this buffer to a file (for example using C-x C-w) and attach it to your bug report.