docs/BUGS

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BUGS

  Curl and libcurl have grown substantially since the beginning. At the time
  of writing (August 2003), there are about 40000 lines of source code, and by
  the time you read this it has probably grown even more.

  Of course there are lots of bugs left. And lots of misfeatures.

  To help us make curl the stable and solid product we want it to be, we need
  bug reports and bug fixes.

WHERE TO REPORT

  If you can't fix a bug yourself and submit a fix for it, try to report an as
  detailed report as possible to a curl mailing list to allow one of us to
  have a go at a solution. You should also post your bug/problem at curl's bug
  tracking system over at

        http://sourceforge.net/bugs/?group_id=976

  (but please read the sections below first before doing that)

  If you feel you need to ask around first, find a suitable mailing list and
  post there. The lists are available on http://curl.haxx.se/mail/

WHAT TO REPORT

  When reporting a bug, you should include all information that will help us
  understand what's wrong, what you expected to happen and how to repeat the
  bad behavior. You therefore need to tell us:

   - your operating system's name and version number (uname -a under a unix
     is fine)
   - what version of curl you're using (curl -V is fine)
   - what URL you were working with (if possible), at least which protocol

  and anything and everything else you think matters. Tell us what you
  expected to happen, tell use what did happen, tell us how you could make it
  work another way. Dig around, try out, test. Then include all the tiny bits
  and pieces in your report. You will benefit from this yourself, as it will
  enable us to help you quicker and more accurately.

  Since curl deals with networks, it often helps us if you include a protocol
  debug dump with your bug report. The output you get by using the -v or
  --trace options.

  If curl crashed, causing a core dump (in unix), there is hardly any use to
  send that huge file to anyone of us. Unless we have an exact same system
  setup as you, we can't do much with it. Instead we ask you to get a stack
  trace and send that (much smaller) output to us instead!

  The address and how to subscribe to the mailing lists are detailed in the
  MANUAL file.

HOW TO GET A STACK TRACE

  First, you must make sure that you compile all sources with -g and that you
  don't 'strip' the final executable. Try to avoid optimizing the code as
  well, remove -O, -O2 etc from the compiler options.

  Run the program until it cores.

  Run your debugger on the core file, like '<debugger> curl core'. <debugger>
  should be replaced with the name of your debugger, in most cases that will
  be 'gdb', but 'dbx' and others also occur.

  When the debugger has finished loading the core file and presents you a
  prompt, enter 'where' (without the quotes) and press return.

  The list that is presented is the stack trace. If everything worked, it is
  supposed to contain the chain of functions that were called when curl
  crashed. Include the stack trace with your detailed bug report. It'll help a
  lot.