Re: What does "Control: reassign -1 libaqbanking44" mean?

[Tony Rowe <torowe@gmail.com>]

On Fri, Mar 12, 2021 at 12:36:59PM +0900, 황병희 wrote:
> Hi i am translator Debain webpage in Korean.
> 
> At bug mailing,
> some user wrote in body of message [1] as below:
> 
> #+begin_src text
> Control: reassign -1 libaqbanking44
> #+end_src
> 
> In particular, i am curious the digit "-1".
> For long time i was thinking about that the "-1".
> 
> Is that "subtraction"? or another meaning?
> 
> Oh please really my head is stiff..
> 
> Sincerely, Byung-Hee
> 
> [1] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=984980
> 
> -- 
> ^고맙습니다 _地平天成_ 감사합니다_^))//
 
Hi Byung-Hee,

"-1" refers to making "one clone" of the bug report and is issued to 
the control server, usually by the packager of the package (as I 
understand it). [1]

In this case, the original report was made to a package-name with a 
typo (libaqbaning44).  So this control [server] instruction was 
reassigning it to the actual package, (libaqbanking44) - with one 
clone of the original bug report.

This is probably an exceptional usage case since the cloning of the 
bug report is done to correct the package-name rather than to indicate 
the bug in two actual packages.

Tony

[1]  https://www.debian.org/Bugs/server-control
[...]
clone bugnumber NewID [ new IDs ... ] 

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.

Example usage:

clone 12345 -1 -2
reassign -1 foo
retitle -1 foo: foo sucks
reassign -2 bar

[...]