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There are some meta-questions about bug reports evolving from questions (1, 2, 3). One way to deal with this is to file a bug report to the package's maintainer or to encourage others to do so. If someone is confronted with this issue the first time, he may be unsure what exactly to do. So I ask this question, where we can link in the future for an "tutorial" on this.

I found a bug in a package and want to inform the maintainer. Where shall I look for the correct way to do so? Are there differences of the most common ways? What shall I include in a report? Are there other policies I should know?

Please note, that I may or may not know anything about the process of software developement and the special features of open-source software.

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    I think the first place to go to is the package's entry on CTAN. (ctan.org/pkg/<pkg name>). Some entries have a direct link to the bug tracker or to a repository (such as GitHub) that has an area for reporting issues. Failing that then check the documentation from the CTAN link (which may be more up-to-date than your installed version).
    – Nicola Talbot
    Mar 17, 2019 at 12:36

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There is no general answer. Hopefully the package has documentation, and that documentation tells you how to contact the author, it may be via email or via a bug tracker on github or sourceforge etc.

However there are many packages with no contact address, or contact addresses that no longer work, or the original author has stopped maintaining the package and doesn't respond to emails. In many cases posting a question on tex.stackexchange is the solution: it provides a link for others with the same problem to find and a place for workarounds to be posted.

However if you can find out where to send the report the basic format should always be the same

  • a small self contained test file
  • a report (usually log file) showing what you got
  • a description of how you ran the test file and what output you expected.
  • (optionally) any suggested fixes

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