4.4.4 The states file

This file lists the possible states for Problem Reports. Each entry has up to three fields, separated by colons. Lines beginning with # will be ignored.

     state:type:description

state

The name of the state. It may contain alphanumerics as well as - (hyphen), _ (underscore), or . (period), but no other characters.

type

This is the type of the state. This field is optional and it may contain alphanumerics as well as - (hyphen), _ (underscore), or . (period), but no other characters.

The concept of the type of a state recognizes that there may for instance be several possible states for a Problem Report which effectively means that the PR is closed and that there may be certain actions that need to be taken when a PR reaches a “closed state”. The problem may have been resolved, it might have been decided that the problem is unsolvable or simply that it won't be solved. Some organizations may for instance wish to consider the “suspended” state as a state of type “closed”.

Currently, the only defined state types are “open” and “closed”, the “open” type isn't currently used for anything while the “closed” type is only used to control the Closed-Date field of PRs. Changing the state of a PR to any state of type “closed” will set the Closed-Date field with a time stamp and changing the state of a PR from one “closed” state to another will leave the Closed-Date field as it was. Changing the state of a PR from any state of type “closed” to a non-closed state will clear the Closed-Date field.

The --skip-closed option of query-pr refers to all states of type “closed”, not to a specific state name of “closed”.

description

This is is an optional one-line description of what the state means. Any character is okay in the description; a newline ends it. gnats itself does not currently use the description for anything, but certain external tools (such as TkGnats and Gnatsweb) look for it, so it's a good idea to include one for every state.

The first state listed will be the state automatically assigned to Problem Reports when they arrive; by default this is named “open”. The last state listed is the end state for Problem Reports — one should usually assume that a PR in this state is not being actively worked on; by default this state is named “closed”. Even if a different name has been chosen for this state, gnats will force this state to be of type “closed”.

It is recommended that you keep the default names of “open” and “closed” for the first and last states respectively, since there may be external tools that depend on these names.