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 section 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

This document was generated by Chad Walstrom on March 3, 2015 using texi2html 1.82.