### D.2 Reporting Bugs ¶

Your bug reports play an essential role in making Octave reliable.

When you encounter a problem, the first thing to do is to see if it is already known. See Known Causes of Trouble. If it isn’t known, then you should report the problem.

Reporting a bug may help you by bringing a solution to your problem, or it may not. In any case, the principal function of a bug report is to help the entire community by making the next version of Octave work better. Bug reports are your contribution to the maintenance of Octave.

In order for a bug report to serve its purpose, you must include the information that makes it possible to fix the bug.