6 Getting Help and Reporting Bugs

After you have read this guide, if you still have questions about ERC, or if you have bugs to report, there are several places you can go.

• https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/ERC is the emacswiki.org page for ERC. Anyone may add tips, hints, etc. to it. If you do so, please help keep it up to date.
• You can ask questions about using ERC on the Emacs mailing list, https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-gnu-emacs, as well as on ERC’s own low-volume list, https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-erc.
• You can visit the IRC Libera.Chat channel ‘#emacs’. Many of the contributors are frequently around and willing to answer your questions. You can also try the relatively quiet ‘#erc’, on the same network, for more involved questions.
• You can check GNU ELPA between Emacs releases to see if a newer version is available that might contain a fix for your issue: https://elpa.gnu.org/packages/erc.html.

  To upgrade, run M-x list-packages RET. In the *Packages* (package-menu-mode) buffer, click the ‘erc’ package link for the desired version. If unsure, or if the version column is too narrow to tell, try the bottom-most candidate. In the resulting help-mode buffer, confirm the version and click ‘Install’. Make sure to restart Emacs before reconnecting to IRC, and don’t forget that you can roll back to the previous version by running M-x package-delete RET. See Packages in The Emacs Editor, for more information.

  Note that a bug affecting Emacs’s packaging machinery may prevent the above method from working on Emacs versions 29 and below. Users on 29 can try running C-u M-x package-install RET instead. Users on 28 and below can click on the installed ‘erc’ line item in the *Packages* buffer instead of the newest one, and then, in the resulting help-mode buffer, find and activate the button for the newest version, which should appear in the summary item ‘Other versions’.

  In the rare instance you need an emergency fix or have volunteered to test an edge feature between ERC releases, you can try adding ‘("devel" . "https://elpa.gnu.org/devel/")’ to package-archives prior to performing the steps above. For this, you’ll want to instead select a snapshot version from the menu. Please be aware that when going this route, the latest changes may not yet be available and you run the risk of incurring other bugs and encountering unstable features.

• To report a bug in ERC, use M-x erc-bug.