Bug#939177: reportbug: With "outfile" rc option, text file does not start with Package line
Hey Scott,
On 2 Sep 2019 Scott wrote:
> I run reportbug with the "outfile" option - that is, I don't have reportbug
> SEND the bug report, just write the information to a text file that I then
> cut/paste into the Compose field of my browser's email site.
>
> Despite that fact that the BRS insists on the Package: line being the first
> line of the bug report, it is NOT the first line of the text file - it is
> preceded by 11 other lines, plus a blank line.
Reportbug is constructing a full email with headers and body, separated
by a newline as required by the email format specification. This makes
reportbug capable of sending the bug report itself, and it also allows
passing it to another local mail software (like mutt) for further
editing and sending. This includes setting the appropriate headers to
control some behaviour details of the BTS.
Using the outfile option in the configuration file as you do is not
recommended:
- It is error-prone: Each time you run reportbug to prepare a bug
report, it will overwrite the previous outfile, regardless of whether
the previous report has already been sent or not. If you report many
bugs and sometimes have multiple instances of reportbug running at the
same time, it is easy to accidentally lose a report that you still
wanted to send.
- It is unreliable: When copying the file content to another mail
software for sending, you need to be aware that the "outfile" is not
intended to be a human-readable text file, but a machine-readable email
template. It only happens to also be the former in many cases. However,
try this if you need to include a foreign word like »liberté« in your
report, and the difference will be obvious. The result is still
perfectly fine, you just can't read it any more!
Using a webmail service is quite uncommon among debian bug reporters, so
it is not well supported from reportbug. Submitting directly from
reportbug really is the easiest way. Using local mail software like mutt
also works very well. Of course you can also use
mutt/emacs/claws-mail/etc to translate the report to human readable
format and paste it into your webmail compose field from there. That
should also take care of moving the headers out of your way.
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