7.1.1. Reporting lots of bugs at once (mass bug filing)

Reporting a great number of bugs for the same problem on a great number of different packages — i.e., more than 10 — is a deprecated practice. Take all possible steps to avoid submitting bulk bugs at all. For instance, if checking for the problem can be automated, add a new check to lintian so that an error or warning is emitted.

If you report more than 10 bugs on the same topic at once, it is recommended that you send a message to debian-devel@lists.debian.org describing your intention before submitting the report, and mentioning the fact in the subject of your mail. This will allow other developers to verify that the bug is a real problem. In addition, it will help prevent a situation in which several maintainers start filing the same bug report simultaneously.

Please use the programs dd-list and if appropriate whodepends (from the package devscripts) to generate a list of all affected packages, and include the output in your mail to debian-devel@lists.debian.org.

Note that when sending lots of bugs on the same subject, you should send the bug report to maintonly@bugs.debian.org so that the bug report is not forwarded to the bug distribution mailing list.

The program mass-bug (from the package devscripts) can be used to file bug reports against a list of packages.

7.1.1.1. Usertags

You may wish to use BTS usertags when submitting bugs across a number of packages. Usertags are similar to normal tags such as ‘patch’ and ‘wishlist’ but differ in that they are user-defined and occupy a namespace that is unique to a particular user. This allows multiple sets of developers to ‘usertag’ the same bug in different ways without conflicting.

To add usertags when filing bugs, specify the User and Usertags pseudo-headers:

To: submit@bugs.debian.org
Subject: title-of-bug
Package: pkgname
[ ... ]
User: email-addr
Usertags: tag-name [ tag-name ... ]
description-of-bug ...

Note that tags are separated by spaces and cannot contain underscores. If you are filing bugs for a particular group or team it is recommended that you set the User to an appropriate mailing list after describing your intention there.

To view bugs tagged with a specific usertag, visit https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=email-addr&tag=tag-name.