# Reporting bugs against Debian packages

This section applies to translators who need to send their completed translations back to the package maintainers, especially for packages from levels above 2 for which no direct Subversion or CVS commit is possible (either because the translator cannot use SVN or CVS or because the package maintainer(s) do not encourage wide commit access).

## Debian bug reports, severities and tags

All interactions with Debian package maintainers should be made through the Debian Bug Tracking System (BTS). Other ways of interaction such as sending files to maintainers directly, or to the &i18n-coords; is to be prohibited as it makes things impossible to track down.

The &i18n-coords; will not encourage direct interaction with either them or the package maintainers. The only exception are cases where translators have direct commit access to the package repositories such as &d-i; level 1 translations.

A bug report is only a special way to send traceable information which is relevant for a given package. This may be a real bug report (i.e. something not working properly or as expected) as well as an enhancement suggestion or a feature request.

Debian bug reports are handled through a web and email interface. Access to the bug reports can be made through the BTS web site: &url-bts;.

Bug reports are sorted by severity and tags.

Details about bug severities, tags and other information regarding bug reports may be found at &url-bts;.

## Recommended bug formatting for translation bug reports

For translation bug reports, the recommended severity to use is wishlist.

The recommended tags are l10n tag as well as the patch tag (because the bug report includes the needed "fix" by including the translation file).

The d-i tag must be used for core D-I translations as well as base-config and tasksel.

The subject of the bug report should begin by "[INTL:xx]". When the package has several translatable materials, the subject should mention which translation is sent.

When translators want to send more than one translation file, they should send one bug report per file to send, in order to avoid confusion. The bug report must mention which type of translation is sent (debconf, programs, etc.).

## Generic method to send bug reports

Reporting a bug to a Debian package is just sending a specially written mail to &email-bts;.

The mail should include in the mail body, at the top, a few special pseudo-fields:

    Package: <package name>
    Version: <version of the package>
    Severity: <bug severity>
    Tags: <bug tags>

As a consequence, the following is a typical manual bug report (Klingon translation for the shadow package sent by the translator named John Doe):

    From: John Doe <john.doe@johndoe.com>
    To: &email-bts;
    Subject: [INTL:tlh] Klingon debconf templates translation

    Package: shadow
    Version: N/A
    Severity: wishlist
    Tags: l10n patch

    Please find attached the Klingon translation of the shadow package.

    (encoded tlh.po file follows)

## Sending bug reports from a Debian system

Translators are encouraged to use the Debian `reportbug` utility which will handle all these formatting details for them.

An example command line follows. It will report a bug against the shadow package with the Klingon (code: tlh) translation:

    reportbug --attach=tlh.po --offline \
      -s "shadow: [INTL:tlh] Klingon debconf templates translation" \
      --severity=wishlist --tag=patch --tag=l10n --no-config-files \
      shadow

The `reportbug` utility must be configured for using correct originating address and real name. See `man reportbug` for details. An example ~/.reportbugrc is given below. Do not use it directly but adapt it to your own needs!

    # reportbug preferences file
    # Version of reportbug this preferences file was written by
    reportbug_version "1.99.51"
    # default operating mode: one of: novice, standard, advanced, expert
    mode standard
    # default user interface
    ui text
    # offline setting - comment out to be online
    #offline
    # name and email setting (if non-default)
    realname "John Doe"
    email "johndoe@johndoe.com"
    # You can add other settings after this line.  See
    # /etc/reportbug.conf for a full listing of options.

It is also worth mentioning the `reportbug-ng` package which features a user-friendly bug reporting utility with full desktop integration.

## Attaching files to bug reports

Translation bug report usually need a file to be attached to the bug report.

To avoid encoding problems, especially on package maintainers side, compressing the translation file with `gzip` is recommended.