wget.info: Reporting Bugs

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8.6 Reporting Bugs
==================

You are welcome to submit bug reports via the GNU Wget bug tracker (see
<https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?func=additem&group=wget>) or to our
mailing list <bug-wget@gnu.org>.

   Visit <https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-wget> to get more
info (how to subscribe, list archives, ...).

   Before actually submitting a bug report, please try to follow a few
simple guidelines.

  1. Please try to ascertain that the behavior you see really is a bug.
     If Wget crashes, it’s a bug.  If Wget does not behave as
     documented, it’s a bug.  If things work strange, but you are not
     sure about the way they are supposed to work, it might well be a
     bug, but you might want to double-check the documentation and the
     mailing lists (Note: Mailing Lists).

  2. Try to repeat the bug in as simple circumstances as possible.  E.g.
     if Wget crashes while downloading ‘wget -rl0 -kKE -t5 --no-proxy
     http://example.com -o /tmp/log’, you should try to see if the crash
     is repeatable, and if will occur with a simpler set of options.
     You might even try to start the download at the page where the
     crash occurred to see if that page somehow triggered the crash.

     Also, while I will probably be interested to know the contents of
     your ‘.wgetrc’ file, just dumping it into the debug message is
     probably a bad idea.  Instead, you should first try to see if the
     bug repeats with ‘.wgetrc’ moved out of the way.  Only if it turns
     out that ‘.wgetrc’ settings affect the bug, mail me the relevant
     parts of the file.

  3. Please start Wget with ‘-d’ option and send us the resulting output
     (or relevant parts thereof).  If Wget was compiled without debug
     support, recompile it—it is _much_ easier to trace bugs with debug
     support on.

     Note: please make sure to remove any potentially sensitive
     information from the debug log before sending it to the bug
     address.  The ‘-d’ won’t go out of its way to collect sensitive
     information, but the log _will_ contain a fairly complete
     transcript of Wget’s communication with the server, which may
     include passwords and pieces of downloaded data.  Since the bug
     address is publicly archived, you may assume that all bug reports
     are visible to the public.

  4. If Wget has crashed, try to run it in a debugger, e.g.  ‘gdb `which
     wget` core’ and type ‘where’ to get the backtrace.  This may not
     work if the system administrator has disabled core files, but it is
     safe to try.