DOKK / manpages / debian 11 / devscripts / bts.1.en
BTS(1) BTS(1)

bts - developers' command line interface to the Debian Bug Tracking System

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

This is a command line interface to the Debian Bug Tracking System (BTS), 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. A local cache of web pages and e-mails from the BTS may also be created and updated.

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!)

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. It is important the dot/comma is surrounded by whitespace so it is not mistaken for part of a command. 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.

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.
Opposite of --offline; overrides any configuration file directive to work offline.
Do not send emails but print them to standard output.
Should we attempt to cache new versions of BTS pages when performing show/bugs commands? Default is to cache.
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.
Time in seconds to delay between each download, to avoid hammering the BTS web server. Default is 5 seconds.
Open a mail reader to read the mbox corresponding to a given bug number for show and bugs commands.
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.)
Send carbon copies to a list of users. CC_EMAIL_ADDRESS should be a comma-separated list of email addresses.
Add the addresses specified in the configuration file option BTS_DEFAULT_CC to the list specified using --cc-addr. This is the default.
Do not add addresses specified in BTS_DEFAULT_CC to the carbon copy list.
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".
Use mutt for sending of mails. Default is not to use mutt, except for some commands.

Note that one of $DEBEMAIL or $EMAIL must be set in the environment in order to use mutt to send emails.

Don't use mutt for sending of mails.
Specify a timeout for SOAP calls as used by the select and status commands.
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.

If SMTPS not specified, bts will still try to use STARTTLS if it's advertised by the SMTP host.

Note that one of $DEBEMAIL or $EMAIL must be set in the environment in order to use direct SMTP connections to send emails.

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.

Note also that the use of the reassign command may, when either --interactive or --force-interactive mode is enabled, lead to the automatic addition of a Cc to $newpackage@packages.debian.org. In these cases, the note above regarding relaying applies. The submission interface (port 587) on reportbug.debian.org does not support relaying and, as such, should not be used as an SMTP server for bts under the circumstances described in this paragraph.

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.

Specify the name to use in the HELO command when connecting to the SMTP server; defaults to the contents of the file /etc/mailname, if it exists.

Note that some SMTP servers may reject the use of a HELO which either does not resolve or does not appear to belong to the host using it.

Use a debbugs server other than https://bugs.debian.org.
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).
Suppress any configuration file --force-refresh option.
Download only new bugs when caching. Do not check for updates in bugs we already have.
When caching bug reports, include those that are marked as resolved. This is the default behaviour.
Reverse the behaviour of the previous option. That is, do not cache bugs that are marked as resolved.
Suppress acknowledgment mails from the BTS. Note that this will only affect the copies of messages CCed to bugs, not those sent to the control bot.
Do not suppress acknowledgement mails. This is the default behaviour.
Before sending an e-mail to the control bot, display the content and allow it to be edited, or the sending cancelled.
Similar to --interactive, with the exception that an editor is spawned before prompting for confirmation of the message to be sent.
Send control e-mails without confirmation. This is the default behaviour.
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).
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. <https://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 this point are: -o/--offline/--online, -m/--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.
Display bug number bug_number.
Display the bugs for the package package.
Display the bugs for the source package package.
Display the bugs for the maintainer email address maintainer.
Display the bugs for the submitter email address submitter.
Display the bugs which are tagged with 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 https://bugs.debian.org/. This page itself will be opened if the command 'bts bugs :' is used.
Display the front page of the release-critical pages on the BTS. This is a synonym for https://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. Warning: on a filesystem mounted with the "noatime" option, running "bts show|bugs" does not update the cache files' access times; a cached bug will then be subject to auto-cleaning 30 days after its initial download, even if it has been accessed in the meantime.

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.

Binary package name.
Source package name.
E-mail address of the maintainer.
E-mail address of the submitter.
Bug severity.
Status of the bug. One of open, done, or forwarded.
Tags applied to the bug. If users is specified, may include usertags in addition to the standard tags.
Bug's owner.
Address of someone who sent mail to the log.
Bugs which affect this package.
List of bugs to search within.
Users to use when looking up usertags.
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

bts select submitter:jrandomdeveloper@example.com tag:wontfix

If a key is used multiple times then the set of bugs selected includes those matching any of the supplied values; for example

bts select package:foo severity:wishlist severity:minor

returns all bugs of package foo with either wishlist or minor severity.

Uses the SOAP interface to output status information for the given bugs (or as read from the listed files -- use - to indicate STDIN).

By default, all populated fields for a bug are displayed.

If verbose is given, empty fields will also be displayed.

If fields is given, only those fields will be displayed. No validity checking is performed on any specified fields.

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.
Mark a bug as Done. This forces interactive mode since done messages should include an explanation why the bug is being closed. You should specify which version of the package closed the bug, if possible.
Reopen a bug, with optional submitter.
Archive a bug that has previously been archived but is currently not. The bug must fulfill 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.
Select a message number that should be used as the summary of a bug.

If no message number is given, the summary is cleared.

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 <https://www.debian.org/Bugs/server-control>.
Indicate that a bug was found to exist in a particular package version. Without version, the list of fixed versions is cleared and the bug is reopened.
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.

Adding/removing the security tag will add "team\@security.debian.org" to the Cc list of the control email.

The list of valid tags and their significance is available at <https://www.debian.org/Bugs/Developer#tags>. The current valid tags are:

patch, wontfix, moreinfo, unreproducible, fixed, help, security, upstream, pending, d-i, confirmed, ipv6, lfs, fixed-upstream, l10n, newcomer, a11y, ftbfs

There is also a tag for each release of Debian since "potato". Note that this list may be out of date, see the website for the most up to date source.

Indicates that a bug affects a package other than that against which it is filed, causing the bug to be listed by default in the package list of the other package. This should generally be used where the bug is severe enough to cause multiple reports from users to be assigned to the wrong package. At least one package must be specified, unless the = flag is used, where the command 

  bts affects <bug> =

will remove all indications that bug affects other packages.

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). claim should be a unique token allowing the bugs you have claimed to be identified; an e-mail address is often used.

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.
The following commands will only apply to bugs which meet the specified criterion; this acts as a safety mechanism for the BTS. If no values are listed, the limits for that key are turned off again. If no keys are specified, all limits are reset.
E-mail address of the submitter.
Date the bug was submitted.
Subject of the bug.
Message-id of the initial bug report.
Binary package name.
Source package name.
Tags applied to the bug.
Bug severity.
Bug's owner.
Bugs affecting this package.
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 limit the set of bugs affected by the subsequent control commands to those submitted by jrandomdeveloper@example.com and tagged wontfix, one would use

bts limit submitter:jrandomdeveloper@example.com tag:wontfix

If a key is used multiple times then the set of bugs selected includes those matching any of the supplied values; for example

bts limit package:foo severity:wishlist severity:minor

only applies the subsequent control commands to bugs of package foo with either wishlist or minor severity.

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.

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 $XDG_CACHE_HOME/devscripts/bts/ or, if XDG_CACHE_HOME is not set, in ~/.cache/devscripts/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.
List cached bug ids (intended to support bash completion). The optional number argument restricts the list to those bug ids that start with that number.
Display version and copyright information.
Display a short summary of commands, suspiciously similar to parts of this man page.

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).
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.
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:

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.
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.
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.
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.
If this is set, specifies a mail reader to use instead of mutt. Same as the --mailreader command line option.
If this is set, specifies a sendmail command to use instead of /usr/sbin/sendmail. Same as the --sendmail command line option.
Download only new bugs when caching. Do not check for updates in bugs we already have. The default is no. Same as the --only-new command line option.
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.

If these options are set, then it is the same as the --smtp-username and --smtp-password options being used.
Same as the --smtp-helo command line option.
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.
If this is set to yes, then it is the same as the --no-ack command line parameter being used. The default is no.
If this is set to yes or force, then it is the same as the --interactive or --force-interactive command line parameter being used. The default is no.
Specify a list of e-mail addresses to which a carbon copy of the generated e-mail to the control bot should automatically be sent.
Specify the name of a debbugs server which should be used instead of https://bugs.debian.org.

Please see <https://www.debian.org/Bugs/server-control> for more details on how to control the BTS using emails and <https://www.debian.org/Bugs/> for more information about the BTS.

querybts(1), reportbug(1), pts-subscribe(1), devscripts.conf(5)

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.

2021-08-18 Debian Utilities