If you have exhausted all of the web‑site resources, and you have searched all of the available mailing‑list archives, and all of the on‑line bug report and feature request tickets, then you may wish to contact MinGW.OSDN for assistance. Please refer to the relevant sections below, for guidance on making general enquiries, on filing bug reports, or on requesting new features.

Please note: the mingw‑w64 and MSYS2 projects are not, in any way, affiliated with MinGW.OSDN; MinGW.OSDN does not support the products of these projects.

General Enquiries

If you encounter a problem using MinGW, or MSYS, and you cannot find a satisfactory answer on our web‑site, in our mailing‑list archives, or elsewhere on the internet, or if you simply need some advice relating to MinGW, or MSYS, then we advise you to subscribe to the MinGW‑Users mailing‑list, and ask.

Do please note that, to help avoid spam, this mailing‑list is open to subscribers only. Please do not attempt to circumvent the subscription process, by sending mail to either the mingw-users-owner, or the mingw-users-admin addresses. Doing so will be of no benefit to you, since subscription is free‑of‑charge in any case, and you will get no reply from the former address, while the latter is reserved for automated self‑help replies, in response to specific subject keywords.

Before posting to this mailing‑list, we strongly recommend that you acquaint yourself with the mailing‑list posting etiquette; compliance with this may improve your chances of receiving a response, whereas non‑compliance may result in your post being ignored.

Reporting Bugs

After discussing an issue on the mailing‑list, as described above, you may be asked to file a formal bug report. (Alternatively, if you are certain that you have identified a bug in a MinGW.OSDN product, you may choose to file such a bug report of your own volition; however, if you choose this course of action, please be aware that many bug reports, which are filed without prior discussion, are ultimately dismissed as user error).

Before you even consider filing a bug report, please review the list of existing tickets, (including closed tickets — ensure that the “Open” and “Closed” status check‑boxes are both selected, and click the “Search” button), to ensure that the issue has not already been reported.

Please do not file a bug report, if your issue relates to an unimplemented API feature; it is more appropriate to file a “Feature Request” instead.

Please do not waste your time, (and ours), reporting issues with your anti‑virus software; the heuristic nature of such software, all too frequently, results in false‑positive reports, and in the absence of deterministic evidence of infection, we will take no action in response.

Regardless of your motivation for filing a bug report, you must, (unless you already have one), create a personal OSDN.net account, and you should also acquaint yourself with the bug reporting guidelines. You may then log in to your OSDN.net account, and proceed to the bug report submission form. Please review the submission instructions, (which appear at the top of the submission form), then complete the form, leaving the ticket type set to “Issue”.

Please do not ignore the submission instructions. In particular, note that, unless you are a member of the MinGW.OSDN Project development team, you are not authorized to assign a specific responder for the ticket; nor are you authorized to assign an elevated priority or severity attribute for your ticket. If you exceed your authority, your ticket will be reassigned to lowest priority/severity, and may even be rejected altogether.

Before you finally submit your report, please use the “Preview” facility to check for, and correct, any markup errors; (these are, alas, all too common, and create a bad impression of the reporter). Pay particular attention to in‑line program code references, or program code examples, (whether in‑line, or multi‑line code blocks); these must  be enclosed in triple‑brace  mark‑up, either as in‑line formatted text,  or as formatted text blocks , as appropriate; (please see the OSDN.net formatting guide, and be aware that the use of fixed pitch,  as introduced by back‑tick  mark‑up, generally isn’t  a satisfactory alternative). Finally, when you are satisfied, click the “Submit” button to complete the ticket submission process.

Feature Requests

When you wish to request the implementation of a new feature, (e.g. to support a currently unsupported MSVC or POSIX API function), you should file a feature request ticket. The procedure is effectively the same as that for filing a bug report, except that you set the ticket type to “Feature Request”, instead of leaving it as “Issue”.

Please be aware that feature request submissions are subject to the same restrictions on your authority, as are applicable to bug reporting.

Before you submit a feature request, it is recommended that you discuss the feasibility of implementing the proposed feature, as a general enquiry topic, on the mailing‑list. Additionally, after you have submitted such a request, you should use the mailing‑list to bring it to the attention of the MinGW user community, and invite them to support your request, by voting on your ticket; (please note that MinGW developers will consider votes, when prioritizing feature requests).