# Reporting Bugs

The Gnash project relies on the community of Gnash users to test the player. Feedback is critical to any successful project. Not only does it let us know that people use Gnash, but it helps us understand the community's needs. Gnash uses a bug tracker on to manage these reports.

When filing a report, please follow the guidelines below. The better your bug report is, the easier it will be for the developers to address the issue. Bug reports without enough information will be asked to provide this information anyway. Adding critical details, like the Operating System you are on, its version, and any relevant error messages from Gnash that you get.

## Get a Fresh Binary Package

For starters, it's a good idea to obtain a copy of the latest snapshot. Although Gnash is primarily released as source, the Gnash build infrastructure allows the automated building of binary packages. Often the version of Gnash as packaged by a GNU/Linux or BSD distribution is based on the last official release, which could be months out of date. It helps us, if this is the case, for you to try a newer packaged build of Gnash.

You can get a fresh binary package of Gnash, as well as recent source packages from http://www.getgnash.org/packages .

## Determine if the bug was previously reported

Search the Gnash bug tracker to see if the bug has already been identified.

If the issue has already been reported, you should not file a bug report. However, you may add some additional information to the ticket if you feel that it will be beneficial to the developers. For instance, if someone reported a memory issue on Ubuntu GNU/Linux, and you noticed the same problem on OpenBSD, your stacktrace would be useful. Conversely, adding a "me too" note to a feature request is not helpful.

## Review the bug writing guidelines

A good bug report should be precise, explicit, and discrete. This means that there should be just one bug per ticket, and that a ticket should contain the following information:

- An overview of the problem;

- Instructions on how to replicate the bug;

- A description of what happened when you performed the steps to replicate the bug, and what you expected to happen;

- Your system information: operating system name and version, as well as the versions of major development dependencies;

- The release number or checkout timestamp for the version of Gnash where you observe the problem;

- The file `config.log`, which should be attached as a file;

- A descriptive title.

Include any additional information that you feel might be useful to the developers.

## Filing a bug report

After following the steps described above, you can file a bug report at .