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 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, "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 are 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.
Specify an SMTP host. If given, bts will send mail by talking directly to this SMTP host rather than by invoking a sendmail command.
The host name may be followed by a colon (":") and a port number in order to use a port other than the default. It may also begin with "ssmtp://" or "smtps://" to indicate that SMTPS should be used.
Note that when sending directly via an SMTP host, specifying addresses in --cc-addr or BTS_DEFAULT_CC that the SMTP host will not relay will cause the SMTP host to reject the entire mail.
Specify the credentials to use when connecting to the SMTP server specified by --smtp-host. If the server does not require authentication then these options should not be used.
If a username is specified but not a password, bts will prompt for the password before sending the mail.
For full details about the commands, see the BTS documentation. http://www.debian.org/Bugs/server-control
This is a synonym for bts bugs.
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:
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:
BROWSER='mozilla -raise -remote "openURL(%s,new-window)":links'
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.
For example, to select the set of bugs submitted by jrandomdeveloper@example.com and tagged wontfix, one would use
bts select submitter:jrandomdeveloper@example.com tag:wontfix
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 a bug, with optional submitter.
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 a bug that is currently archived.
Change the title of the bug.
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 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.
Indicate that a bug was found to exist in a particular package version.
Remove the record that bug was encountered in the given version of the package to which it is assigned.
Indicate that a bug was fixed in a particular package version, without affecting the bug's open/closed status.
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>".
Note that a bug is blocked from being fixed by a set of other bugs.
Note that a bug is no longer blocked from being fixed by a set of other bugs.
Merge a set of bugs together.
Forcibly merge a set of bugs together. The first bug listed is the master bug, and its settings (those which must be equal in a normal merge) are assigned to the bugs listed next.
Unmerge a bug.
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.
Specify a user email address before using the usertags command.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Mark the bug as forwarded to the given address (usually an email address or a URL for an upstream bug tracker).
Mark a bug as not forwarded.
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.
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.
Mark a bug as having no "owner".
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 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.
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.
spamreport is a synonym for reportspam.
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.)
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.
Display version and copyright information.
Display a short summary of commands, suspiciously similar to parts of this man page.
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:
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.
Please see http://www.debian.org/Bugs/server-control for more details on how to control the BTS using emails and http://www.debian.org/Bugs/ for more information about the BTS.
reportbug(1), querybts(1)
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.