[ previous ] [ Contents ] [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] [ 4 ] [ 5 ] [ 6 ] [ next ]



Debian's Bug Tracking System
Chapter 4 - Handling of bug reports



4.1 Followup messages

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 nnn@bugs.debian.org and to the original submitter of the bug report. The bug tracking system will file the reply with the rest of the logs for that bug report and forward it to debian-bugs-dist. The bug will not be marked as done.

If you wish to send a followup message which is not appropriate for debian-bugs-dist you can do so by sending it to [email protected] or nnn[email protected], which only file it (not forwarding it anywhere) and send it on only to the maintainer of the package in question, respectively.

Do not use the `reply to all recipients' or `followup' feature of your mailer unless you intend to edit down the recipients substantially. In particular, don't send a followup message both to nnn@bugs.debian.org and to [email protected], because the bug system will then get two copies of it and each one will be forwarded to debian-bugs-dist separately.


4.2 Recording that you have passed on a bug report

When a developer forwards a bug report to the developer of the general source package from which the Debian package is derived, they should note this in the bug tracking system as follows:

Make sure that the To field of your message to the author to has only the author(s) address(es) in it; put both the person who reported the bug and [email protected] in the `CC' field.

Ask the author to preserve the `CC' to nnn-forwarded@bugs when they reply, so that the bug tracking system will file their reply with the original report.

When the bug tracking system gets a message at nnn-forwarded it will mark the relevant bug as having been forwarded to the address(es) in the `To' field of the message it gets.

You can also manipulate the `forwarded to' information by sending messages to control@bugs.


4.3 Closing bug reports

A developer who sees a bug and takes responsibility for it should hit `Reply' in their favourite mailreader, and then edit the `To' field to say nnn[email protected] instead of nnn@bugs (nnn-close is provided as an alias for nnn-done).

The address of the original submitter of the bug report will be included in the default `To' field, because the bug system included it in the `Reply-To.'

`Done' messages are automatically forwarded to the debian-bugs-closed mailing list, so it may sometimes be worthwhile including the debian-devel mailing list if the other developers are likely to be interested.

The person closing the bug and the person who submitted it will each get a notification about the change in status of the report.


4.4 Reopening, reassigning and manipulating bugs

It is possible to reassign bug reports to other packages, to reopen erroneously-closed ones, to modify the information saying to where, if anywhere, a bug report has been forwarded, to change the titles of reports and to merge and unmerge bug reports. This is done by sending mail to [email protected].

The format of these messages is described in the folllowing sections.


[ previous ] [ Contents ] [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] [ 4 ] [ 5 ] [ 6 ] [ next ]


Debian's Bug Tracking System


version 0.2, 8 July 2007

Ian Jackson [email protected]
Christian Schwarz [email protected]