(gcc.info.gz) Bug Criteria

 
 Have You Found a Bug?
 =====================
 
    If you are not sure whether you have found a bug, here are some
 guidelines:
 
    * If the compiler gets a fatal signal, for any input whatever, that
      is a compiler bug.  Reliable compilers never crash.
 
    * If the compiler produces invalid assembly code, for any input
      whatever (except an `asm' statement), that is a compiler bug,
      unless the compiler reports errors (not just warnings) which would
      ordinarily prevent the assembler from being run.
 
    * If the compiler produces valid assembly code that does not
      correctly execute the input source code, that is a compiler bug.
 
      However, you must double-check to make sure, because you may have
      run into an incompatibility between GNU C and traditional C (
      Incompatibilities.).  These incompatibilities might be considered
      bugs, but they are inescapable consequences of valuable features.
 
      Or you may have a program whose behavior is undefined, which
      happened by chance to give the desired results with another C or
      C++ compiler.
 
      For example, in many nonoptimizing compilers, you can write `x;'
      at the end of a function instead of `return x;', with the same
      results.  But the value of the function is undefined if `return'
      is omitted; it is not a bug when GCC produces different results.
 
      Problems often result from expressions with two increment
      operators, as in `f (*p++, *p++)'.  Your previous compiler might
      have interpreted that expression the way you intended; GCC might
      interpret it another way.  Neither compiler is wrong.  The bug is
      in your code.
 
      After you have localized the error to a single source line, it
      should be easy to check for these things.  If your program is
      correct and well defined, you have found a compiler bug.
 
    * If the compiler produces an error message for valid input, that is
      a compiler bug.
 
    * If the compiler does not produce an error message for invalid
      input, that is a compiler bug.  However, you should note that your
      idea of "invalid input" might be my idea of "an extension" or
      "support for traditional practice".
 
    * If you are an experienced user of C or C++ (or Fortran or
      Objective-C) compilers, your suggestions for improvement of GCC
      are welcome in any case.
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