Developers' information regarding the bug processing system

The system doesn't (yet) route problem reports to the appropriate developer. Rather, its intent is to help ensure that they don't go unanswered.

Initially, a bug report is submitted by a user as an ordinary mail message to debian-bugs@pixar.com. This will then be given a number, acknowledged to the user, and forwarded to the debian-devel list.

The Subject line will have Bug#nnn: added, and the Reply-To will be modified to include debian-bugs@pixar.com.

A developer who sees a bug on debian-devel and takes responsibility for it should hit Reply in their favourite mailreader, and then edit the To field to include debian-bugs-done as well as or instead of the other addresses which are present (debian-bugs and the address of original submitter of the problem report).

The developers' Subject line should look like Bug#nnn: or Re: Bug#nnn:, which will allow the script to mark that bug as processed.

Whenever a message is received at debian-bugs-done with a Subject looking like either of those the corresponding bug will be marked as done, and messages confirming this will be sent to the original submitter of the bug report and to the person marking it as done. The message will not be forwarded to debian-devel by default - if this is desired the person marking the bug as done should include debian-devel in their To field.

Anything that arrives at debian-bugs-done without Bug#nn or Re: Bug#nnn at the start of the Subject will be ignored, apart from generating a warning message that is hopefully clear enough to avoid confusing users who accidentally send messages to it.

If a developer wishes to reply to a bug report without marking the bug as done they may simply reply to the message. Their reply will (by default) go to debian-bugs and to the original submitter of the bug report. The bug tracking system will file the reply reply with the rest of the logs for that bug report and forward it to debian-devel. The bug will not be marked as done.

Every Friday a list of outstanding bug reports is posted to debian-devel; every Tuesday a list of bug reports that have gone unanswered too long is posted.

Sending copies of bug reports to other addresses

Sometimes it is necessary to send a copy of a bug report to some address other than debian-devel, which is where they are normally sent.

You could do this by CC'ing your bug report to the other address(es), but then the other copies would not have the bug report number inserted in the Subject line. When the recipients reply they will probably preserve the debian-bugs entry in the header and have their message filed as a new bug report.

The right way to do this is to use the X-Debian-CC header. Add a line like this to your message's mail header (not to the psuedo header with the Package field):

 X-Debian-CC: other-list@cosmic.edu

This will cause the bug tracking system to send a copy of your report to the address(es) in the X-Debian-CC line as well as to debian-bugs.

This feature can be combined with X-Debian-PR: quiet - see below.

Quiet processing of bug reports

It is possible to get the bug tracking system not to forward your messages to debian-bugs on to debian-devel. To do this you need to add this line to your message's mail header (not to the psuedo header with the Package field):

 X-Debian-PR: quiet

This will cause it not to send the message on; the fact that you have done this will be noted in the acknowledgement message you get. The message will still be filed, and assigned a bug number if it doesn't already have one.

Reopening and reassigning bugs

It is possible to reassign bug reports to other packages, and to reopen erroneously-closed ones, by sending mail to debian-bugs-request@pixar.com.

The mail you send should be a series of commands, one per line. You'll receive a reply which looks like a transcript of your message being interpreted, with a response to each command. No notifications are sent to anyone; however, the messages are logged and made available in the WWW pages.

The commands are:

reassign bugnumber package: Records that bug #bugnumber is a bug in package. This can be used to set the package if the user forgot the psuedo-header, or to change an earlier assignment.
reopen bugnumber: Reopens #bugnumber if it is closed. If it is not closed it won't do anything. If the bug is closed it is reopened, and you are recorded as the originator of the report, so that you will get the ack when it is closed again. This is to avoid flooding potentially-naive users with many notifications about the same report.
help: Sends this help message.

Suggestions for future features are welcome, though anything that requires the sending of notifications to various parties about the state(s) of bug report(s) is unlikely to be implemented.

Future plans

At some point the bug reporting system may be changed to send bug reports directly to the developer in question, rather than to debian-devel. When this happens the Package: secondary header field may become mandatory - at the moment omitting it just produces a warning message.

Other pages:

Ian Jackson / iwj10@thor.cam.ac.uk. 8th September 1995.