                 Introduction to the bug system request server

   There is a mailserver which can send the bug reports and indices as
   plain text on request.

   To use it you send a mail message to request@bugs.debian.org. The
   Subject of the message is ignored, except for generating the Subject of
   the reply.

   The body you send should be a series of commands, one per line. You'll
   receive a reply which looks like a transcript of your message being
   interpreted, with a response to each command. No notifications are sent
   to anyone for the commands listed here and the mail isn't logged
   anywhere publicly available.

   Any text on a line starting with a hash sign # is ignored; the server
   will stop processing when it finds a line with a control terminator (
   quit, thank you, or two hyphens are common examples). It will also stop
   if it encounters too many unrecognised or badly-formatted commands. If
   no commands are successfully handled it will send the help text for the
   server.

                               Commands available

   send bugnumber
   send-detail bugnumber
          Requests the transcript for the bug report in question.
          send-detail sends all of the "boring" messages in the transcript
          as well, such as the various auto-acks.

   index [full]
   index-summary by-package
   index-summary by-number
          Request the full index (with full details, and including done
          and forwarded reports), or the summary sorted by package or by
          number, respectively.

   index-maint
          Requests the index page giving the list of maintainers with bugs
          (open and recently-closed) in the tracking system.

   index maint maintainer
          Requests the index pages of bugs in the system for the
          maintainer maintainer. The search term is an exact match. The
          bug index will be sent in a separate message.

   index-packages
          Requests the index page giving the list of packages with bugs
          (open and recently-closed) in the tracking system.

   index packages package
          Requests the index pages of bugs in the system for the package
          package. The search term is an exact match. The bug index will
          be sent in a separate message.

   getinfo filename
          Request a file containing information about package(s) and or
          maintainer(s) - the files available are:

        maintainers
                The unified list of packages' maintainers, as used by the
                tracking system. This is derived from information in the
                Packages files, override files and pseudo-packages files.

        override.distribution
        override.distribution.non-free
        override.distribution.contrib
        override.experimental
                Information about the priorities and sections of packages
                and overriding values for the maintainers. This
                information is used by the process which generates the
                Packages files in the FTP archive. Information is
                available for each of the main distribution trees
                available, by their codewords.

        pseudo-packages.description
        pseudo-packages.maintainers
                List of descriptions and maintainers respectively for
                pseudo-packages.

   refcard
          Requests that the mailservers' reference card be sent in plain
          ASCII.

   user address
          Sets address to be the "user" of all usertag commands that
          follow.

   usertag bugnumber [ + | - | = ] tag [ tag ... ]
          Allows to define tags on a per-user basis. The usertag command
          works just like the regular tag command, except that you get to
          make up whatever tags you like. By default, the address in the
          From: or Reply-To: header of your mail will be used to set the
          user of the usertag.

   usercategory category-name [ [hidden] ]
          Adds, updates or removes a usercategory. By default the user
          category is visible, if the optional argument [hidden] is
          specified then it will not be visible, but still be available to
          be referenced from other user category definitions.

          This command is somewhat special, as when adding or updating a
          user category it requires a body following immediately after the
          command. If the body is empty the user category will get removed
          instead. The body is composed of lines starting with any number
          of spaces. Each category should start with a line with *, and
          optionally it can be followed by several selection lines
          starting with +. The complete format is as follows:

          * category-name-1
          * Category Title 2 [ [selection-prefix] ]
           + Selection Title 1 [ [ order: ] selection-1 ]
           + Selection Title 2 [ [ order: ] selection-2 ]
           + Default Selection Title [ [ order: ] ]
          * category-name-3
          The category-names appearing in the command and in the body are
          used to make references between them, to avoid unnecessary
          inlining. The Category Titles are used in the package report
          summary.

          The optional selection-prefix is prefixed to every selection on
          each entry in the category section. The first selection which
          matches gets the bug shown under it. The optional order
          parameter specifies the position when showing the selected
          entries, this is useful when using a match that selects a
          superset of the previous ones but that needs to be shown before
          them.

          The category-name normal has the special meaning of being the
          default view, so by replacing it with a different user category
          for the pkgname@packages.debian.org user one can change the
          default classification for a package.

          Example usage:

    usercategory dpkg-program [hidden]
     * Program
       + dpkg-deb [tag=dpkg-deb]
       + dpkg-query [tag=dpkg-query]
       + dselect [package=dselect]

    usercategory new-status [hidden]
     * Status [pending=]
       + Outstanding with Patch Available [0:pending+tag=patch]
       + Outstanding and Confirmed [1:pending+tag=confirmed]
       + Outstanding and More Information Needed [pending+tag=moreinfo]
       + Outstanding and Forwarded [pending+tag=forwarded]
       + Outstanding but Will Not Fix [pending+tag=wontfix]
       + Outstanding and Unclassified [2:pending]
       + From other Branch [absent]
       + Pending Upload [pending-fixed]
       + Fixed in NMU [fixed]
       + Resolved [done]
       + Unknown Pending Status []

    # Change default view
    usercategory normal
      * new-status
      * severity

    usercategory old-normal
      * status
      * severity
      * classification

   help
          Requests that this help document be sent by email in plain
          ASCII.

   quit
   stop
   thank
   thanks
   thankyou
   thank you
   --
          Stops processing at this point of the message. After this you
          may include any text you like, and it will be ignored. You can
          use this to include longer comments than are suitable for #, for
          example for the benefit of human readers of your message
          (reading it via the tracking system logs or due to a CC or BCC).

   #...
          One-line comment. The # must be at the start of the line.

   debug level
          Sets the debugging level to level, which should be a nonnegative
          integer. 0 is no debugging; 1 is usually sufficient. The
          debugging output appears in the transcript. It is not likely to
          be useful to general users of the bug system.

   There is a reference card for the mailservers, available via the WWW,
   in bug-mailserver-refcard.txt or by email using the refcard command
   (see above).

   If you wish to manipulate bug reports you should use the
   control@bugs.debian.org address, which understands a superset of the
   commands listed above. This is described in another document, available
   on the WWW, in the file bug-maint-mailcontrol.txt, or by sending help
   to control@bugs.debian.org.

   In case you are reading this as a plain text file or via email: an HTML
   version is available via the bug system main contents page
   https://www.debian.org/Bugs/.
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