Bugs, bugs, bugs!

Bug reporting is an extremely important aspect of GIMP development. Reporting bugs correctly is the best way to help the developers identify problems. The better the bug report, the faster a developer can reproduce the issue and therefore work on a solution. On this page, you will find the information you need to start writing good bug reports. In addition, if you would like to work on fixing the problem yourself, you will find instructions here on how.

More information about Bugzilla, and bug hunting in general, can be found at http://developer.gimp.org/. See also why we are using Bugzilla to handle bug reports.

Submit a bug report

Bug How Tos

Since correctly submitting a bug report requires you to use tools you may have not used previously, we have created two documents. The first helps you to learn Bugzilla, which is the bug system used by the GIMP developers to track bug reports. If you are fixing a problem yourself, the second document shows you how to properly create and submit a patch.

Bug Lists

Below are different links into Bugzilla which show you lists of open and closed bugs. You can also search manually, but these links are often more convienient. With the help of the lists below you should be able to see if the bug you have found has already been reported. If it has been reported, and you have additional information, please add a comment with the additional information!

GIMP bugs

List of closed bugs (The past week)

GIMP Help bugs

List of closed bugs (The past week)

GIMP Website bugs

List of closed bugs (The past week)

Security bugs

Some bug reports may be related to security issues. For example, a file plug-in may be vulnerable to a buffer overflow allowing arbitrary code execution when loading an image. We believe that the best way to report these vulnerabilities is through Bugzilla, as described above. This will ensure that the bug is reviewed and handled quickly (if necessary, a developer may decide to hide a sensitive bug report from other users until it is fixed). But if you really do not want to use Bugzilla for security reports and you do not mind some extra delay, you can also contact a limited set of GIMP developers by mail @gimp.org, using the special alias "security". What will happen next is that a developer will review the issue and submit it in Bugzilla, usually as a hidden bug report only visible to developers. This will take a bit longer than if you directly submit the bug yourself, but we know that some people have a policy of not disclosing security vulnerabilities publicly, so we provide that address for their convenience.