9.1 Standard Mailing Lists

Once a program is in use, you will get bug reports for it. Most GNU programs have their own special lists for sending bug reports. The advertised bug-reporting email address should always be ‘bug-package@gnu.org’, to help show users that the program is a GNU package, but it is ok to set up that list to forward to another site if you prefer.

We also have a catch-all list, bug-gnu-utils@gnu.org, which is used for all GNU programs that don’t have their own specific lists. But nowadays we want to give each program its own bug-reporting list and move away from using bug-gnu-utils.

See Replying to Mail, for more about handling and tracking bug reports.

Some GNU programs with many users have another mailing list, ‘help-package@gnu.org’, for people to ask other users for help. If your program has many users, you should create such a list for it. For a fairly new program, which doesn’t have a large user base yet, it is better not to bother with this.

If you wish, you can also have a mailing list ‘info-package@gnu.org’ for announcements (see Announcements). Any other mailing lists you find useful can also be created.

The package distribution should state the name of all the package’s mailing lists in a prominent place, and ask users to help us by reporting bugs appropriately. The top-level README file and/or AUTHORS file are good places. Mailing list information should also be included in the manual and the package web pages (see Web Pages).