bts - developers' command line interface to the BTS

bts [options] command [args] [#comment] [.|, command [args] [#comment]] ...

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:

 % bts close 85942 1.1
 % bts severity 69042 normal
 % bts merge 69042 43233
 % bts retitle 69042 blah blah

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, close Bug#85942 is understood, as is close #85942.

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. (Note that something like bts close #85942 will not be treated as a comment!)

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.

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, 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 CW%s'. (Also, %% will be substituted by a single % if this is needed.)

-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.

-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.

For full details about the commands, see the BTS documentation. <http://bugs.debian.org/server-control>

show [options] [<bug number> | <package> | <maintainer> | : ] [opt=val ...]

show [options] [src:<package> | from:<submitter> | tag:<tag> ] [opt=val ...]

This is a synonym for bts bugs.

bugs [options] [<bug number> | <package> | <maintainer> | : ] [opt=val ..]

bugs [options] [src:<package> | from:<submitter> | tag:<tag> ] [opt=val ..]

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>.

:

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. 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, there exists a cache directory ~/.devscripts_cache/bts/), then any page requested by bts show will automatically be cached, and therefore 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. This automatic caching can be disabled using the --no-cache option or explicitly enabled using the --cache option. 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 CW%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 CW%s because some popular browsers have remote-invocation syntax that requires it. Unless %% reduces to %, it won't be possible to have a literal CW%s in the string. For example, on most Linux systems a good thing to do would be: BROWSER='mozilla -raise -remote openURL(%s,new-window):links'

clone <bug> [new IDs]

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.

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'.

reassign <bug> [<bug> ...] <package> [<version>]

Reassign a bug or a number of bugs to a different package. The version field is optional; see the explanation at <http://www.debian.org/Bugs/server-control>.

found <bug> <version>

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.

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.

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.

severity <bug> <severity>

Change the severity of a bug. 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 the responsibility of dealing with it, and will receive all of the email corresponding to the bug instead of the usual maintainer.

noowner <bug>

Mark a bug as having no owner.

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.

cache [options] [<maint email> | <pkg> | src:<pkg> | from:<submitter>]

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. The cached bugs are stored in ~/.devscripts_cache/bts/ Once you have set up a cache, you can ask for it to be used with the -o switch. For example:

  bts -o bugs
  bts -o show 12345

Also, once the cache is set up, bts will update the files in it in a piecemeal fashion as it downloads information from the bts. 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. A final benefit to using a cache is that it will speed download times for bugs in the cache even when you're online, as it can just compare the item in the cache with what's on the server, and not re-download it every time. 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. Both of these are 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).

cleancache <package> | src:<package> | <maintainer>

cleancache from:<submitter> | tag:<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.

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.

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.

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>. It is licensed under the terms of the GPL, either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.