This is a command line interface to the bug tracking system, intended mainly
for use by developers. It lets the BTS be manipulated using simple commands
that can be run at the prompt or in a script, does various sanity checks on
the input, and constructs and sends a mail to the BTS control address for
you.
In general, the command line interface is the same as what you would write
in a mail to control@bugs.debian.org, just prefixed with ``bts''. For
example:
A few additional commands have been added for your convenience, and this
program is less strict about what constitutes a valid bug number. For example,
``severity Bug#85942 normal'' is understood, as is ``severity #85942 normal''.
(Of course, your shell may regard ``#'' as a comment character though, so you
may need to quote it!)
Also, for your convenience, this program allows you to abbreviate commands
to the shortest unique substring (similar to how cvs lets you abbreviate
commands). So it understands things like ``bts cl 85942''.
It is also possible to include a comment in the mail sent to the BTS. If
your shell does not strip out the comment in a command like
``bts severity 30321 normal #inflated severity'', then this program is smart
enough to figure out where the comment is, and include it in the email.
Note that most shells do strip out such comments before they get to the
program, unless the comment is quoted. (Something like ``bts
severity #85942 normal'' will not be treated as a comment!)
In most cases, adding a comment will cause the generated mail to be CCed
to the bug report, in addition to control@bugs.debian.org.
You can specify multiple commands by separating them with a single dot,
rather like update-rc.d; a single comma may also be used; all the
commands will then be sent in a single mail. For example (quoting where
necessary so that bts sees the comment):
% bts severity 95672 normal , merge 95672 95673 \#they\'re the same!
The abbreviation ``it'' may be used to refer to the last mentioned bug
number, so you could write:
% bts severity 95672 wishlist, retitle it "bts: please add a --foo option"
Please use this program responsibly, and do take our users into
consideration.
OPTIONS
bts examines the devscripts configuration files as described
below. Command line options override the configuration file settings,
though.
-o, --offline
Make bts use cached bugs for the 'show' and 'bugs' commands, if a cache
is available for the requested data. See the cache command, below for
information on setting up a cache.
--online, --no-offline
Opposite of --offline; overrides any configuration file directive to work
offline.
--cache, --no-cache
Should we attempt to cache new versions of BTS pages when
performing show/bugs commands? Default is to cache.
--cache-mode={min|mbox|full}
When running a bts cache command, should we only mirror the basic
bug (min), or should we also mirror the mbox version (mbox), or should
we mirror the whole thing, including the mbox and the boring
attachments to the BTS bug pages and the acknowledgement emails (full)?
Default is min.
--cache-delay=seconds
Time in seconds to delay between each download, to avoid hammering the BTS
web server. Default is 5 seconds.
--mbox
Open a mail reader to read the mbox corresponding to a given bug number
for show and bugs commands.
--mailreader=READER
Specify the command to read the mbox. Must contain a ``%s'' string
(unquoted!), which will be replaced by the name of the mbox file. The
command will be split on white space and will not be passed to a
shell. Default is 'mutt -f %s'. (Also, %% will be substituted by a
single % if this is needed.)
--cc-addr=CC_EMAIL_ADDRESS
Send carbon copies to a list of users. CC_EMAIL_ADDRESS should be a
comma-separated list of emails.
--sendmail=SENDMAILCMD
Specify the sendmail command. The command will be split on white
space and will not be passed to a shell. Default is
'/usr/sbin/sendmail'. The -t option will be automatically added if
the command is /usr/sbin/sendmail or /usr/sbin/exim*. For other
mailers, if they require a -t option, this must be included in the
SENDMAILCMD, for example: --sendmail=``/usr/sbin/mymailer -t''
--smtp-host=SMTPHOST
Specify an SMTP host. If given, bts will send mail by talking directly to
this SMTP host rather than by invoking a sendmail command.
Note that when sending directly via an SMTP host, specifying addresses in
--cc-addr that the SMTP host will not relay will cause the SMTP host to reject
the entire mail.
-f, --force-refresh
Download a bug report again, even if it does not appear to have
changed since the last cache command. Useful if a --cache-mode=full is
requested for the first time (otherwise unchanged bug reports will not
be downloaded again, even if the boring bits have not been
downloaded).
--no-force-refresh
Suppress any configuration file --force-refresh option.
--only-new
Download only new bugs when caching. Don't check for updates in
bugs we already have.
--include-resolved
When caching bug reports, include those that are marked as resolved. This
is the default behaviour.
--no-include-resolved
Reverse the behaviour of the previous option. That is, do not cache bugs
that are marked as resolved.
-q, --quiet
When running bts cache, only display information about newly cached
pages, not messages saying already cached. If this option is
specified twice, only output error messages (to stderr).
--no-conf, --noconf
Do not read any configuration files. This can only be used as the
first option given on the command-line.
Display the page listing the requested bugs in a web browser using
sensible-browser(1).
Options may be specified after the ``bugs'' command in addition to or
instead of options at the start of the command line: recognised
options at his point are: -o/--offline/--online, --mbox, --mailreader
and --[no-]cache. These are described earlier in this manpage. If
either the -o or --offline option is used, or there is already an
up-to-date copy in the local cache, the cached version will be used.
The meanings of the possible arguments are as follows:
(none)
If nothing is specified, bts bugs will display your bugs, assuming
that either DEBEMAIL or EMAIL (examined in that order) is set to the
appropriate email address.
<bug number>
Display bug number <bug number>.
<package>
Display the bugs for the package <package>.
src:<package>
Display the bugs for the source package <package>.
<maintainer>
Display the bugs for the maintainer email address <maintainer>.
from:<submitter>
Display the bugs for the submitter email address <submitter>.
tag:<tag>
Display the bugs which are tagged with <tag>.
usertag:<tag>
Display the bugs which are tagged with usertag <tag>. See the BTS
documentation for more information on usertags. This will require the
use of a users=<email> option.
:
Details of the bug tracking system itself, along with a bug-request
page with more options than this script, can be found on
http://bugs.debian.org/. This page itself will be opened if the
command 'bts bugs :' is used.
release-critical, RC
Display the front page of the release-critical pages on the BTS. This
is a synonym for http://bugs.debian.org/release-critical/index.html.
It is also possible to say release-critical/debian/main.html and the like.
RC is a synonym for release-critical/other/all.html.
After the argument specifying what to display, you can optionally
specify options to use to format the page or change what it displayed.
These are passed to the BTS in the URL downloaded. For example, pass
dist=stable to see bugs affecting the stable version of a package,
version=1.0 to see bugs affecting that version of a package, or reverse=yes
to display newest messages first in a bug log.
If caching has been enabled (that is, --no-cache has not been used,
and BTS_CACHE has not been set to ``no''), then any page requested by
``bts show'' will automatically be cached, and be available offline
thereafter. Pages which are automatically cached in this way will be
deleted on subsequent ``bts show|bugs|cache'' invocations if they have
not been accessed in 30 days.
Any other bts commands following this on the command line will be
executed after the browser has been exited.
The desired browser can be specified and configured by setting the
BROWSER environment variable. The conventions follow those defined by
Eric Raymond at http://www.catb.org/~esr/BROWSER/; we here reproduce the
relevant part.
The value of BROWSER may consist of a colon-separated series of
browser command parts. These should be tried in order until one
succeeds. Each command part may optionally contain the string ``%s''; if
it does, the URL to be viewed is substituted there. If a command part
does not contain %s, the browser is to be launched as if the URL had
been supplied as its first argument. The string %% must be substituted
as a single %.
Rationale: We need to be able to specify multiple browser commands so
programs obeying this convention can do the right thing in either X or
console environments, trying X first. Specifying multiple commands may
also be useful for people who share files like .profile across
multiple systems. We need %s because some popular browsers have
remote-invocation syntax that requires it. Unless %% reduces to %, it
won't be possible to have a literal %s in the string.
For example, on most Linux systems a good thing to do would be:
Uses the SOAP interface to output a list of bugs which match the given
selection requirements.
The following keys are allowed, and may be given multiple times.
package
Binary package name.
source
Source package name.
maintainer
E-mail address of the maintainer.
submitter
E-mail address of the submitter.
severity
Bug severity.
status
Status of the bug.
tag
Tags applied to the bug. If users is specified, may include
usertags in addition to the standard tags.
owner
Bug's owner.
bugs
List of bugs to search within.
users
Users to use when looking up usertags.
archive
Whether to search archived bugs or normal bugs; defaults to 0
(i.e. only search normal bugs). As a special case, if archive is
'both', both archived and unarchived bugs are returned.
For example, to select the set of bugs submitted by
jrandomdeveloper@example.com and tagged wontfix, one would use
The clone control command allows you to duplicate a bug report. It is useful
in the case where a single report actually indicates that multiple distinct
bugs have occurred. ``New IDs'' are negative numbers, separated by spaces,
which may be used in subsequent control commands to refer to the newly
duplicated bugs. A new report is generated for each new ID.
reopen <bug> [<submitter>]
Reopen a bug, with optional submitter.
archive <bug>
Archive a bug that has previously been archived but is currently not.
The bug must fulfil all of the requirements for archiving with the
exception of those that are time-based.
unarchive <bug>
Unarchive a bug that is currently archived.
retitle <bug> <title>
Change the title of the bug.
submitter <bug> [<bug> ...] <submitter-email>
Change the submitter address of a bug or a number of bugs, with `!' meaning
`use the address on the current email as the new submitter address'.
Indicate that a bug was found to exist in a particular package version.
notfound <bug> <version>
Remove the record that bug was encountered in the given version of the
package to which it is assigned.
fixed <bug> <version>
Indicate that a bug was fixed in a particular package version, without
affecting the bug's open/closed status.
notfixed <bug> <version>
Remove the record that a bug was fixed in the given version of the
package to which it is assigned.
This is equivalent to the sequence of commands ``found <bug> <version>'',
``notfound <bug> <version>''.
block <bug> by|with <bug> [<bug> ...]
Note that a bug is blocked from being fixed by a set of other bugs.
unblock <bug> by|with <bug> [<bug> ...]
Note that a bug is no longer blocked from being fixed by a set of other bugs.
merge <bug> <bug> [<bug> ...]
Merge a set of bugs together.
forcemerge <bug> <bug> [<bug> ...]
Forcibly merge a set of bugs together.
unmerge <bug>
Unmerge a bug.
tag <bug> [+|-|=] tag [tag ..]
tags <bug> [+|-|=] tag [tag ..]
Set or unset a tag on a bug. The tag may either be the exact tag name
or it may be abbreviated to any unique tag substring. (So using
``fixed'' will set the tag ``fixed'', not ``fixed-upstream'', for example,
but ``fix'' would not be acceptable.) Multiple tags may be specified as
well. The two commands (tag and tags) are identical. At least one tag
must be specified, unless the '=' flag is used, where the command
bts tags <bug> =
will remove all tags from the specified bug.
user <email>
Specify a user email address before using the usertags command.
usertag <bug> [+|-|=] tag [tag ..]
usertags <bug> [+|-|=] tag [tag ..]
Set or unset a user tag on a bug. The tag must be the exact tag name wanted;
there are no defaults or checking of tag names. Multiple tags may be
specified as well. The two commands (usertag and usertags) are identical.
At least one tag must be specified, unless the '=' flag is used, where the
command
bts usertags <bug> =
will remove all user tags from the specified bug.
claim <bug> [<claim>]
Record that you have claimed a bug (e.g. for a bug squashing party).
If no claim is specified, the environment variable DEBEMAIL
or EMAIL (checked in that order) is used.
unclaim <bug> [<claim>]
Remove the record that you have claimed a bug.
If no claim is specified, the environment variable DEBEMAIL
or EMAIL (checked in that order) is used.
severity <bug> <severity>
Change the severity of a bug. Available severities are: wishlist, minor, normal,
important, serious, grave, critical. The severity may be abbreviated to any
unique substring.
forwarded <bug> <email>
Mark the bug as forwarded to the given email address.
notforwarded <bug>
Mark a bug as not forwarded.
package [ <package> ... ]
The following commands will only apply to bugs against the listed
packages; this acts as a safety mechanism for the BTS. If no packages
are listed, this check is turned off again.
owner <bug> <owner-email>
Change the ``owner'' address of a bug, with `!' meaning
`use the address on the current email as the new owner address'.
The owner of a bug accepts responsibility for dealing with it. Note that
the ``owner'' of a bug does not automatically receive all of the email
corresponding to it; use ``subscribe'' to achieve that.
noowner <bug>
Mark a bug as having no ``owner''.
subscribe <bug> <email>
Subscribe the given email address to the specified bug report. If no email
address is specified, the environment variable DEBEMAIL or EMAIL (in that
order) is used. If those are not set, or `!' is given as email address,
your default address will be used.
After executing this command, you will be sent a subscription confirmation to
which you have to reply. When subscribed to a bug report, you receive all
relevant emails and notifications. Use the unsubscribe command to unsubscribe.
unsubscribe <bug> <email>
Unsubscribe the given email address from the specified bug report. As with
subscribe above, if no email address is specified, the environment variables
DEBEMAIL or EMAIL (in that order) is used. If those are not set, or `!' is
given as email address, your default address will be used.
After executing this command, you will be sent an unsubscription confirmation
to which you have to reply. Use the subscribe command to, well, subscribe.
reportspam <bug> ...
The reportspam command allows you to report a bug report as containing spam.
It saves one from having to go to the bug web page to do so.
Generate or update a cache of bug reports for the given email address
or package. By default it downloads all bugs belonging to the email
address in the DEBEMAIL environment variable (or the EMAIL environment
variable if DEBEMAIL is unset). This command may be repeated to cache
bugs belonging to several people or packages. If multiple packages or
addresses are supplied, bugs belonging to any of the arguments will be
cached; those belonging to more than one of the arguments will only be
downloaded once. The cached bugs are stored in ~/.devscripts_cache/bts/
You can use the cached bugs with the -o switch. For example:
bts -o bugs
bts -o show 12345
Also, bts will update the files in it in a piecemeal fashion as it
downloads information from the BTS using the 'show' command. You might
thus set up the cache, and update the whole thing once a week, while
letting the automatic cache updates update the bugs you frequently
refer to during the week.
Some options affect the behaviour of the cache command. The first is
the setting of --cache-mode, which controls how much bts downloads
of the referenced links from the bug page, including boring bits such
as the acknowledgement emails, emails to the control bot, and the mbox
version of the bug report. It can take three values: min (the
minimum), mbox (download the minimum plus the mbox version of the bug
report) or full (the whole works). The second is --force-refresh or
-f, which forces the download, even if the cached bug report is
up-to-date. The --include-resolved option indicates whether bug
reports marked as resolved should be downloaded during caching.
Each of these is configurable from the configuration
file, as described below. They may also be specified after the
``cache'' command as well as at the start of the command line.
Finally, -q or --quiet will suppress messages about caches being
up-to-date, and giving the option twice will suppress all cache
messages (except for error messages).
Beware of caching RC, though: it will take a LONG time! (With 1000+
RC bugs and a delay of 5 seconds between bugs, you're looking at a
minimum of 1.5 hours, and probably significantly more than that.)
cleancache from:<submitter> | tag:<tag> | usertag:<tag> | <number> | ALL
Clean the cache for the specified package, maintainer, etc., as
described above for the ``bugs'' command, or clean the entire cache if
``ALL'' is specified. This is useful if you are going to have permanent
network access or if the database has become corrupted for some
reason. Note that for safety, this command does not default to the
value of DEBEMAIL or EMAIL.
version
Display version and copyright information.
help
Display a short summary of commands, suspiciously similar to parts of this
man page.
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
DEBEMAIL
If this is set, the From: line in the email will be set to use this email
address instead of your normal email address (as would be determined by
mail).
DEBFULLNAME
If DEBEMAIL is set, DEBFULLNAME is examined to determine the full name
to use; if this is not set, bts attempts to determine a name from
your passwd entry.
BROWSER
If set, it specifies the browser to use for the 'show' and 'bugs'
options. See the description above.
CONFIGURATION VARIABLES
The two configuration files /etc/devscripts.conf and
~/.devscripts are sourced by a shell in that order to set
configuration variables. Command line options can be used to override
configuration file settings. Environment variable settings are
ignored for this purpose. The currently recognised variables are:
BTS_OFFLINE
If this is set to yes, then it is the same as the --offline command
line parameter being used. Only has an effect on the show and bugs
commands. The default is no. See the description of the show
command above for more information.
BTS_CACHE
If this is set to no, then it is the same as the --no-cache command
line parameter being used. Only has an effect on the show and bug
commands. The default is yes. Again, see the show command above
for more information.
BTS_CACHE_MODE={min,mbox,full}
How much of the BTS should we mirror when we are asked to cache something?
Just the minimum, or also the mbox or the whole thing? The default is
min, and it has the same meaning as the --cache-mode command line
parameter. Only has an effect on the cache. See the cache command for more
information.
BTS_FORCE_REFRESH
If this is set to yes, then it is the same as the --force-refresh
command line parameter being used. Only has an effect on the cache
command. The default is no. See the cache command for more
information.
BTS_MAIL_READER
If this is set, specifies a mail reader to use instead of mutt. Same as
the --mailreader command line option.
BTS_SENDMAIL_COMMAND
If this is set, specifies a sendmail command to use instead of
/usr/sbin/sendmail. Same as the --sendmail command line option.
BTS_ONLY_NEW
Download only new bugs when caching. Don't check for updates in
bugs we already have.
BTS_SMTP_HOST
If this is set, specifies an SMTP host to use for sending mail rather
than using the sendmail command. Same as the --smtp-host command line
option.
Note that this option takes priority over BTS_SENDMAIL_COMMAND if both are
set, unless the --sendmail option is used.
BTS_INCLUDE_RESOLVED
If this is set to no, then it is the same as the --no-include-resolved
command line parameter being used. Only has an effect on the cache
command. The default is yes. See the cache command for more
information.
COPYRIGHT
This program is Copyright (C) 2001-2003 by Joey Hess <joeyh@debian.org>.
Many modifications have been made, Copyright (C) 2002-2005 Julian
Gilbey <jdg@debian.org> and Copyright (C) 2007 Josh Triplett
<josh@freedesktop.org>.
It is licensed under the terms of the GPL, either version 2 of the
License, or (at your option) any later version.