[Reportbug-maint] Bug#532150: Bug#532150: reportbug: [regression] no longer supports custom mua commands

[chaica at ohmytux.com]

Hi Paul,

Thanks for the report, it is true MUA support has changed a lot recently.

Allowing custom muas outside supported muas exclude the possibility to give
feedback to the user about what happened *after* reportbug gave the bug
report to the mua. How can reportbug know if your script/custom software is
available on your system and efficiently working ? What error code should
reportbug wait to inform the user the bug report failed to be sent ? We
chose to only support some muas in order to provide a better efficienty
using reportbug. And we did it because some users reported bugs *because*
reportbug was not alerting them when the mua failed and finally was not
doing its job. 
I think the main idea is to guarantee the user that the bug report will
efficiently be sent through every options offered by reportbug.

Bye,
Carl Chenet

On Sun, 07 Jun 2009 12:53:35 +0800, Paul Wise <pabs at debian.org> wrote:
> Package: reportbug
> Version: 4.4
> Severity: important
> 
> I just upgraded from lenny to squeeze and was disappointed to find that
> reportbug no longer supports custom MUAs. reportbug doesn't support my
> preferred MUA (evolution) so I use a custom MUA script to dump reportbug
> mails into my evolution drafts folder, where I edit them and send them
> on using evolution and its SMTP settings (which vary by mail address).
> 
> pabs at chianamo:~$ cat ~/.reportbugrc 
> mode standard
> ui text
> #ui urwid
> #offline
> realname "Paul Wise"
> email "pabs at debian.org"
> no-cc
> mua '/home/pabs/bin/evolution-bug-wrapper'
> pabs at chianamo:~$ reportbug reportbug
> Specified mail user agent is not supported; exiting.
> pabs at chianamo:~$ cat ~/bin/evolution-bug-wrapper
> #!/bin/sh
> echo 'From pabs at debian.org -' >> ~/.evolution/mail/local/Drafts
> cat $* >> ~/.evolution/mail/local/Drafts
> rm -f $*
> pabs at chianamo:~$ ls -l ~/bin/evolution-bug-wrapper
> lrwxrwxrwx 1 pabs pabs 42 2007-08-26 09:47
> /home/pabs/bin/evolution-bug-wrapper ->
> /home/pabs/devel/bin/evolution-bug-wrapper*
> pabs at chianamo:~$ ls -l ~/devel/bin/evolution-bug-wrapper
> -rwxr-x--- 1 pabs pabs 125 2008-12-12 17:24
> /home/pabs/devel/bin/evolution-bug-wrapper*
> 
> Please fix reportbug to allow custom MUAs again. Using mutt as my MUA
> and making it dump postponed messages into evolution's drafts folder is
> slightly more cumbersome than just dumping them there via a script.
> 
> It would also be nice if you could grab all the MUA stuff from
> reportbug-ng so I can just use evolution to report bugs in Debian, the
> custom MUA support is also important to keep though IMO.
> 
> -- Package-specific info:
> ** Environment settings:
> EDITOR="nano"
> REPORTBUGEMAIL="pabs at debian.org"
> DEBEMAIL="pabs at debian.org"
> EMAIL="pabs at debian.org"
> DEBFULLNAME="Paul Wise"
> DEBNAME="Paul Wise"
> NAME="Paul Wise"
> INTERFACE="text"
> 
> ** /home/pabs/.reportbugrc:
> mode standard
> ui text
> realname "Paul Wise"
> email "pabs at debian.org"
> no-cc
> 
> -- System Information:
> Debian Release: squeeze/sid
>   APT prefers testing
>   APT policy: (700, 'testing'), (600, 'unstable'), (550, 'experimental')
> Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
> 
> Kernel: Linux 2.6.29-2-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
> Locale: LANG=en_AU.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_AU.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
> Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
> 
> Versions of packages reportbug depends on:
> ii  apt                           0.7.21     Advanced front-end for dpkg
> ii  python                        2.5.4-2    An interactive high-level
> object-o
> ii  python-reportbug              4.4        Python modules for
interacting
> wit
> 
> Versions of packages reportbug suggests:
> pn  debconf-utils                 <none>     (no description available)
> pn  debsums                       <none>     (no description available)
> pn  dlocate                       <none>     (no description available)
> ii  exim4                         4.69-11    metapackage to ease Exim MTA
> (v4) 
> ii  exim4-daemon-light [mail-tran 4.69-11    lightweight Exim MTA (v4)
> daemon
> ii  file                          5.03-1     Determines file type using
> "magic"
> ii  gnupg                         1.4.9-4    GNU privacy guard - a free
PGP
> rep
> ii  python-gnome2-extras          2.25.3-1   Extra Python bindings for
the
> GNOM
> ii  python-gtk2                   2.14.1-2   Python bindings for the GTK+
> widge
> ii  python-urwid                  0.9.8.4-1  curses-based UI/widget
library
> for
> ii  python-vte                    1:0.20.1-1 Python bindings for the VTE
> widget