DOKK / manpages / debian 12 / devscripts / rc-alert.1.en
RC-ALERT(1) General Commands Manual RC-ALERT(1)

rc-alert - check for installed packages with release-critical bugs

rc-alert [inclusion options] [--debtags [tag[,tag ...]]] [--popcon] [package ...]
rc-alert --help|--version

rc-alert downloads the list of release-critical bugs from the Debian BTS webpages, and then outputs a list of packages installed on the system, or given on the command-line, which are in that list.

If the directory $XDG_CACHE_HOME/devscripts/rc-alert exists or the --cache option is given, then the (sizable) downloaded list will be cached, and will only be downloaded again on a second invocation if it has changed.

Force the creation of the $XDG_CACHE_HOME/devscripts/rc-alert cache directory.
Show a summary of options.
Show version and copyright information.

It is also possible to filter the list of bugs reported based on the tags and distributions associated with the package. The filtering options are:

A list of tags which the bug must have, in the format used for output. For example, to include bugs tagged security or help wanted, use "SH".
If set to and, a bug must have all of the tags specified by --include-tags.
A list of tags which the bug must not have, in the same format as --include-tags.
If set to and, a bug must have none of the tags specified by --exclude-tags. By default, the bug will be excluded if any tag matches.
A list of distributions which the bug must apply to, in the format used for output. For example, to include bugs affecting testing or unstable, use "TU".
If set to and, a bug must apply to all of the specified distributions in order to be included.
A list of distributions to which the bug must not apply, in the same format as --include-dists.
If set to and, a bug must apply to all of the specified distributions in order to be excluded. By default the bug will be excluded if it applies to any of the listed distributions.

It is also possible to only list bugs which have specific debtags set. Note that you need to have debtags installed and also that it's not mandatory for maintainers to set proper debtags. The produced list will thus probably be incomplete.

Match packages based on the listed tags. Each package is matched only if it has all the listed tags; in the case of multiple tags within the same facet, a package is matched if it has any of the listed tags within the facet.
--debtags-database
Use a non-standard debtags database. The default is /var/lib/debtags/packages-tags.

Popularity-contest collects data about installation and usage of Debian packages. You can additionally sort the bugs by the popcon rank of the related packages.

Sort bugs by the popcon rank of the package the bug belongs to.
By default, packages are sorted according to the number of people who have the package installed. This option enables sorting by the number of people regularly using the package instead. This option has no effect in combination with --pc-local.
Instead of requesting remote data the information from the last popcon run is used (/var/log/popularity-contest).

The bug must apply to at least one of oldstable or stable
The bug must apply to both testing and unstable
The bug must apply to oldstable and be tagged security but not patch
The bug must apply to only unstable or experimental (or both) and be tagged unreproducible
The bug must apply to packages matching the specified debtags, i.e. the match will only include packages that have the 'role::plugin' tag and that have either of the tags 'implemented-in::perl' or 'implemented-in::python'.
Read /var/log/popularity-contest and sort bugs by your personal popcon ranking (which is basically the atime of your packages' binaries).

It is not possible to say "does not apply only to unstable"

debtags(1) popbugs(1) popularity-contest(8)

rc-alert was written by Anthony DeRobertis and modified by Julian Gilbey <jdg@debian.org> and Adam D. Barratt <adam@adam-barratt.org.uk> for the devscripts package. Debtags and popcon functionality was added by Jan Hauke Rahm <info@jhr-online.de>.

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