Tags and usertags
The BTS supports tagging mechanisms to organize and manage bugs:
global pre-defined tags
free-form usertags associated with a user
There are 2 typical use cases of the usertags:
package centric usertags which use the e-mail address packagename@packages.debian.org for user
personal or team usertags which use an e-mail address for user
There are many standardised usertags and usercategories in use:
Package centric usertags
The use of package centric usertags enables to organize the default BTS package view if usercategory is set for the package. See BTS for devscripts as an example.
Here are some typical cases:
To report a bug on the bts command in the devscripts package with its version 1.0, you set the pseudo-header fields like this:
Package: devscripts Version: 1.0 User: devscripts@packages.debian.org Usertags: bts bugreport...
The fields User and Usertags control the user tags for the bug report.
If you wish to set usertags to bts for an bug# 12345, you send an e-mail to control@bugs.debian.org with the following content:
user devscripts@packages.debian.org usertags 12345 bts ... thanks
Alternatively, you may use the bts command from the shell as:
$ bts user devscripts@packages.debian.org , usertags 12345 bts
The tweaking of usercategory should be done only by people involved with resolving bugs.
Personal or team usertags
The use of personal or team usertag enables to organize the user specific BTS package view associated to a user identified by a personal e-mail address or a team e-mail address.
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?tag=lsb;users=debian-lsb@lists.debian.org
Bug-Urls listed in lenny release goal
The email address is not important and doesn't even need to be valid. It just provides a namespace for the tag to exist in. This means there is no need to co-ordinate a central list of tags.
If you wish to mark bug# 12345 as todo, use the bts command from the shell as:
$ bts user foo@example.org , usertags 12345 todo
Then, you can see all bugs with the todo usertags with https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?tag=todo;users=foo@example.org
Note on usercategory and display
Use <pkg>@packages.debian.org as user@domain.tld (only if you are actually from that team).
pay attention at the order you write the tags in the usercategory, since it will be the same order the tags will show up on the BTS page.
when you add a tag to bugs, you need to modify the usercategory to treat that tag too (I don't like this, but that's the way it is).
you can add a usertag to usercategory even if no bug is usertagged (yet) with it: it will appears as soon a some bugs will have that usertag.
usertag name can have only alphanumerics, at, dot, plus and dash, while <cat> in <cat> [<tag>] can have underscore too (maybe other chars, untested).
Access to usertags and usercategories
Usertags are available on the bugs page for individual packages, via the BTS SOAP interface, in UDD, via a UDD CGI and via rsync:
rsync rsync://bugs-mirror.debian.org/bts-spool-index/user/*/someone*example.org ./
Links
The official documentation: user usertags usercategory
Comments
Comments about usertags can go on this page...
from #debian-mentors:
<pabs> ooh, usertags <pabs> bts++ <Nigel> pabs: i thought it was a random users suggestion at first, was about to reply, "HAHAHA, they will never do that" <pabs> :) <pabs> aj does roxor <Nigel> yeah <Nigel> i must go and set usertags on all my bugs now... <Nigel> i must say the following though: it'd be nice for the maintainer to get a copy of all tags set... <pabs> yeah, indeed <Nigel> also, it'd be nice if there was a link up the top now, with "Maintainers Tags" <Nigel> or (dunno if this defeats the purpose) set it up so tags set against the maintainer's email address, or the package@packages.d.o addy shown by default... <pabs> even better, add a thing to reqest@ for advertising usertags by default for a certain user/package/etc combo <pabs> adding it to the wiki page :)
- After playing around with usertags a bit for the purpose of using them for tracking bugs about non-DFSG-free documentation, here some thoughts about further improvements:
One could add a option to the CGI to select a predefined categorisation class. I would like to say something like
Example 1: ...;class0=Status;nam1=myown;pri1=...;ttl1=...;class2=Severity
Another useful addition could be to be able to globally rearrange the ordering of the categories. If I have used example 1 and now I want to rearrange the categorisation to move Severity to the top level I currently would have to do that (we assume for a moment the class parameters would actually work):
Example 2: ...;class1=Status;nam2=myown;pri2=...;ttl2=...;class0=Severity better: ...;class0=Status;nam1=myown;pri1=...;ttl1=...;class2=Severity;ord=1,2,0
Here my first tries with categorisation together with usertags:
by ?FrankLichtenheld
I've started to use usertags to track QA issues, using "proposed-{removal,orphan}" on bugs that I've filed on very old and rc-buggy packages. At the moment, I'm using this to track my bugs (as they were filed yesterday, I don't have much experience yet). It's quite useful, but the long URIs are not ideal, so I second Frank's request for a way to specify standard classifications in a shorter way.
It would also be very nice to use the package a bug is filed against to divide them into sections. I'd like to use something like this:
tag=proposed-orphan,proposed-removal; users=debian-qa@lists.debian.org; ... nam1=Status;pri1=pkg:ftp.debian.org,wnpp; ttl1=Pending removal,Waiting for adoption,No answer yet; ord1=2,1,0
by ?MarcBrockschmidt
Couldn't we show the usertags of packagename@packages.debian.org by default on the BTS site of packagename? Like this the maintainer could categorise the bugs with a set of his own tags and all users could see them.
(This is done.)
I've created a page, OngoingTransitions, that tracks library transitions in unstable. It'd be nice to have support for classifying by "is there a tag by this user set?", in order to separate claimed bugs (by bugsquash@qa.debian.org ).รง
--?AdeodatoSimo
DebianInstaller uses usertags and usercategories to produce some useful views of our bugs and installation reports. See DebianInstaller/Bugs for details.
The testing security team tags bugs with their CVE id (ie, CVE-2005-0001) and also uses a "tracked" tag to indicate security bugs that they are tracking and find ones they are not. These tags are added automatically based on info in their database. Set users= debian-security@lists.debian.org to see these tags.
Here's a useful view in the BTS: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?tag=security;users=debian-security@lists.debian.org;ordering=tracked