HOWTO submit a RUST bug report

• I think I found a bug in the compiler!

  If you see this message: ''error: internal compiler error: unexpected failure'', then you have definitely found a bug in the compiler. It's also possible that your code is not well-typed, but if you saw this message, it's still a bug in error reporting.

  If you see a message about an LLVM assertion failure, then you have also definitely found a bug in the compiler. In both of these cases, it's not your fault and you should report a bug!

  If you see a compiler error message that you think is meant for users to see, but it confuses you, that's a bug too. If it wasn't clear to you, then it's an error message we want to improve, so please report it so that we can try to make it better.

• I don't want to waste the Rust devs' time! How do I know the bug I found isn't a bug that already exists in the issue tracker?

  If you don't have much time, then don't worry about that. Just submit the bug. If it's a duplicate, somebody will notice that and close it. No one will laugh at you, we promise (and if someone did, they would be violating the Rust [code of conduct](https://github.com/mozilla/rust/wiki/Note-development-policy code of conduct)).

  If you have more time, it's very helpful if you can type the text of the error message you got into the issue tracker search box to see if there's an existing bug that resembles your problem. If there is, and it's an open bug, you can comment on that issue and say you ran into it too. This will encourage devs to fix it. But again, don't let this stop you from submitting a bug. We'd rather have to do the work of closing duplicates than miss out on valid bug reports.

• What information should I include in a bug report?

  It's helpful to include your specific OS (for example: Mac OS X 10.8.3, Windows 7, Ubuntu 12.0.4) and your hardware architecture (for example: i686, x86_64). It's also helpful to copy/paste the output of re-running the erroneous rustc commmand with the -v flag. Finally, if you can run the offending command under gdb, pasting a stack trace can be useful; to do so, you will need to set a breakpoint on rust_begin_unwind.

• I submitted a bug, but nobody has commented on it! I'm sad.

  This is sad, but does happen sometimes, since we're short-staffed. If you submit a bug and you haven't received a comment on it within 3 business days, it's entirely reasonable to either ask on the #rust IRC channel, or post on the rust-dev mailing list to ask what the status of the bug is.