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 [email protected]. If you are not a member of the mailing list, your mail will be passed to the list after a moderator has approved it².

For bug reports, please first try to reproduce the bug with the latest version of Org available—if you are running an outdated version, it is quite possible that the bug has been fixed already. If the bug persists, prepare a report and provide as much information as possible, including the version information of Emacs (M-x emacs-version RET) and Org (M-x org-version RET), as well as the Org related setup in .emacs. The easiest way to do this is to use the command

M-x org-submit-bug-report RET

which will put all this information into an Emacs mail buffer so that you only need to add your description. If you re not sending the Email from within Emacs, please copy and paste the content into your Email program.

Sometimes you might face a problem due to an error in your Emacs or Org mode setup. Before reporting a bug, it is very helpful to start Emacs with minimal customizations and reproduce the problem. Doing so often helps you determine if the problem is with your customization or with Org mode itself. You can start a typical minimal session with a command like the example below.

$ emacs -Q -l /path/to/minimal-org.el

However if you are using Org mode as distributed with Emacs, a minimal setup is not necessary. In that case it is sufficient to start Emacs as emacs -Q. The minimal-org.el setup file can have contents as shown below.

;;; Minimal setup to load latest 'org-mode'

;; activate debugging
(setq debug-on-error t
      debug-on-signal nil
      debug-on-quit nil)

;; add latest org-mode to load path
(add-to-list 'load-path (expand-file-name "/path/to/org-mode/lisp"))
(add-to-list 'load-path (expand-file-name "/path/to/org-mode/contrib/lisp" t))

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?

Thank you for helping to improve this program.

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. Reload uncompiled versions of all Org mode Lisp files. The backtrace contains much more information if it is produced with uncompiled code. To do this, use

   C-u M-x org-reload RET
   

   or select Org -> Refresh/Reload -> Reload Org uncompiled from the menu.

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.