D.4.  Sending bug reports from a Debian system

Translators are encouraged to use the Debian reportbug utility which will handle all these formatting details for them.

An example command line follows. It will report a bug against the shadow package with the Klingon (code: tlh) translation:

reportbug --attach=tlh.po --offline \
  -s "shadow: [INTL:tlh] Klingon debconf templates translation" \
  --severity=wishlist --tag=patch --tag=l10n --no-config-files \
  shadow

The reportbug utility must be configured for using correct originating address and real name. See man reportbug for details. An example ~/.reportbugrc is given below. Do not use it directly but adapt it to your own needs!

# reportbug preferences file
# Version of reportbug this preferences file was written by
reportbug_version "1.99.51"
# default operating mode: one of: novice, standard, advanced, expert
mode standard
# default user interface
ui text
# offline setting - comment out to be online
#offline
# name and e-mail setting (if non-default)
realname "John Doe"
email "johndoe@johndoe.com"
# You can add other settings after this line.  See
# /etc/reportbug.conf for a full listing of options.

It is also worth mentioning the reportbug-ng package which features a user-friendly bug reporting utility with full desktop integration.