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author | Chris Ball <cjb@laptop.org> | 2009-10-05 23:15:39 -0400 |
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committer | Chris Ball <cjb@laptop.org> | 2009-10-05 23:15:39 -0400 |
commit | b6a50c703369467132876f21efa8e4ffc672afae (patch) | |
tree | 905a9ae34efa2bce47d754893093b016d18d0162 /interfaces/email/interactive/README | |
parent | 6a639574fa95e50f82fa3052e5524b961295a7ab (diff) | |
parent | e35ccf95ea89b6e622202caae30d3b8cca3f2473 (diff) | |
download | bugseverywhere-b6a50c703369467132876f21efa8e4ffc672afae.tar.gz |
Large merge from W. Trevor King, including Gianluca's HTML export.
Diffstat (limited to 'interfaces/email/interactive/README')
-rw-r--r-- | interfaces/email/interactive/README | 145 |
1 files changed, 145 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/interfaces/email/interactive/README b/interfaces/email/interactive/README new file mode 100644 index 0000000..79ef9a9 --- /dev/null +++ b/interfaces/email/interactive/README @@ -0,0 +1,145 @@ +Overview +======== + +The interactive email interface to Bugs Everywhere (BE) attempts to +provide a Debian-bug-tracking-system-style interface to a BE +repository. Users can mail in bug reports, comments, or control +requests, which will be committed to the served repository. +Developers can then pull the changes they approve of from the served +repository into their other repositories and push updates back onto +the served repository. + +For details about the Debian bug tracking system that inspired this +interface, see http://www.debian.org/Bugs . + +Architecture +============ + +In order to reduce setup costs, the entire interface can piggyback on +an existing email address, although from a security standpoint it's +probably best to create a dedicated user. Incoming email is filtered +by procmail, with matching emails being piped into be-handle-mail for +execution. + +Once be-handle-mail receives the email, the parsing method is selected +according to the subject tag that procmail used grab the email in the +first place. There are three parsing styles: + Style Subject + creating bugs [be-bug:submit] new bug summary + commenting on bugs [be-bug:<bug-id>] commit message + control [be-bug] commit message +These are analogous to submit@bugs.debian.org, nnn@bugs.debian.org, +and control@bugs.debian.org respectively. + +Creating bugs +============= + +This interface creates a bug whose summary is given by the email's +post-tag subject. The body of the email must begin with a +pseudo-header containing at least the "Version" field. Anything after +the pseudo-header and before a line starting with '--' is, if present, +attached as the bug's first comment. + + From jdoe@example.com Fri Apr 18 12:00:00 2008 + From: John Doe <jdoe@example.com> + Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2008 12:00:00 +0000 + Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 + Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit + Subject: [be-bug:submit] Need tests for the email interface. + + Version: XYZ + Severity: minor + + Someone should write up a series of test emails to send into + be-handle mail so we can test changes quickly without having to + use procmail. + + -- + Goofy tagline not included. + +Available pseudo-headers are Version, Reporter, Assign, Depend, +Severity, Status, Tag, and Target. + +Commenting on bugs +================== + +This interface appends a comment to the bug specified in the subject +tag. The the first non-multipart body is attached with the +appropriate content-type. In the case of "text/plain" contents, +anything following a line starting with '--' is stripped. + + From jdoe@example.com Fri Apr 18 12:00:00 2008 + From: John Doe <jdoe@example.com> + Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2008 12:00:00 +0000 + Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 + Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit + Subject: [be-bug:XYZ] Isolated problem in baz() + + Finally tracked it down to the bar() call. Some sort of + string<->unicode conversion problem. Solution ideas? + + -- + Goofy tagline not included. + +Controlling bugs +================ + +This interface consists of a list of allowed be commands, with one +command per line. Blank lines and lines beginning with '#' are +ignored, as well anything following a line starting with '--'. All +the listed commands are executed in order and their output returned. +The commands are split into arguments with the POSIX-compliant +shlex.split(). + + From jdoe@example.com Fri Apr 18 12:00:00 2008 + From: John Doe <jdoe@example.com> + Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2008 12:00:00 +0000 + Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 + Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit + Subject: [be-bug] I'll handle XYZ by release 1.2.3 + + assign XYZ "John Doe <jdoe@example.com>" + status XYZ assigned + severity XYZ critical + target XYZ 1.2.3 + + -- + Goofy tagline ignored. + +Example emails +============== + +Take a look at my interfaces/email/interactive/examples for some +more examples. + +Procmail rules +============== + +The file _procmailrc as it stands is fairly appropriate for as a +dedicated user's ~/.procmailrc. It forwards matching mail to +be-handle-mail, which should be installed somewhere in the user's +path. All non-matching mail is dumped into /dev/null. Everything +procmail does will be logged to ~/be-mail/procmail.log. + +If you're piggybacking the interface on top of an existing account, +you probably only need to add the be-handle-mail stanza to your +existing ~/.procmailrc, since you will still want to receive non-bug +emails. + +Note that you will probably have to add a + --be-dir /path/to/served/repository +option to the be-handle-mail invocation so it knows what repository to +serve. + +Multiple repositories may be served by the same email address by adding +multiple be-handle-mail stanzas, each matching a different tag, for +example the "[be-bug" portion of the stanza could be "[projectX-bug", +"[projectY-bug", etc. If you change the base tag, be sure to add a + --tag-base "projectX-bug" +or equivalent to your be-handle-mail invocation. + +Testing +======= + +Send test emails in to be-handle-mail with something like + cat examples/blank | ./be-handle-mail -o -l - -a |