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1.4 Problem Report format

The format of a PR is designed to reflect the nature of gnats as a database. Information is arranged into fields, and kept in individual records (Problem Reports).

A Problem Report contains two different types of fields: Mail Header fields, which are used by the mail handler for delivery, and Problem Report fields, which contain information relevant to the Problem Report and its submitter. A Problem Report is essentially a specially formatted electronic mail message.

Problem Report fields are denoted by a keyword which begins with > and ends with :, as in >Confidential:. Fields belong to one of eight data types as listed in Field datatypes reference. As of version 4 of gnats all characteristics of fields, such as field name, data type, allowed values, permitted operations, on-change actions etc. are configurable.

For details, see see The dbconfig file.

Example Problem Report

The following is an example Problem Report with the fields that would be present in a standard gnats configuration. Mail headers are at the top, followed by gnats fields, which begin with > and end with :. The Subject: line in the mail header and the Synopsis field are usually duplicates of each other.

     Message-Id:  message-id
     Date:        date
     From:        address
     Reply-To:    address
     To:          bug-address
     Subject:     subject
     
     >Number:       gnats-id
     >Category:     category
     >Synopsis:     synopsis
     >Confidential: yes or no
     >Severity:     critical, serious, or non-critical
     >Priority:     high, medium or low
     >Responsible:  responsible
     >State:        open, analyzed, suspended, feedback, or closed
     >Class:        sw-bug, doc-bug, change-request, support,
     duplicate, or mistaken
     >Submitter-Id: submitter-id
     >Arrival-Date: date
     >Originator:   name
     >Organization: organization
     >Release:      release
     >Environment:
        environment
     >Description:
        description
     >How-To-Repeat:
        how-to-repeat
     >Fix:
        fix
     >Audit-Trail:
     appended-messages...
     State-Changed-From-To: from-to
     State-Changed-When: date
     State-Changed-Why:
        reason
     Responsible-Changed-From-To: from-to
     Responsible-Changed-When: date
     Responsible-Changed-Why:
        reason
     >Unformatted:
        miscellaneous