                     DEBIAN BUG TRACKING SYSTEM
                     --------------------------

This bug tracking system was developed by Ian Jackson from 1994-1997,
with assistance from nCipher Corporation Limited in 1997.  nCipher allowed
Ian to redistribute modifications he made to the system while working as an
employee of nCipher.

=============================================================================
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
=============================================================================
 - GNU date
 - GNU gzip
 - Perl 5 (5.005 is known to work)
 - Mailtools and MIME-tools perl modules to manipulate email
 - Lynx 2.7 or later
 - The bug system requires its own mail domain.  It comes with code
   which understands how exim, qmail and sendmail deliver mail for such a 
   domain to a script.
 - A webserver.  For the old system of static HTML pages generated for
   bug reports and index pages, this is easiest if the bug system can
   write directly to the webspace; for the new system of CGI scripts
   that generate web pages on the fly, write access is not required.
 - Somewhere to run CGI scripts (unless you don't need the web forms for
   searching for bugs by number, package, maintainer or submitter).

=============================================================================
INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS
=============================================================================

Install the Debian package and read /usr/share/doc/debbugs/README.Debian file.

If you can't use the .deb, do the following:

1. Run "make install" from the source directory.

2. Edit the config files in /etc/debbugs/ directory to suit your needs.
Re-run debbugsconfig when you're finished to regenerate the
documentation.

3. Set up the mail arrangements to deliver mail to the right place, and to
set up a blackhole mail alias if you need one.  Ensure that owner@bugs, the
address of the BTS owner, if that's what you're using, is handled by the MTA.
All other email should be piped into the receive script.

4. Set up your HTTP server to point people looking for bug reports to
/var/lib/debbugs/www and set /var/lib/debbugs/www/cgi as a valid CGI
directory.

5. Test things a bit, by sending mail messages to the bug system and
running /usr/lib/debbugs/processall and/or /usr/lib/debbugs/rebuild.
The latter updates index files used by the CGI scripts.  If you're
feeling brave, you can link /var/lib/debbugs/spool/index.db to
index.db.realtime and .../index.archive to index.archive.realtime to
remove the need for the rebuild script; this is still semi-experimental.

6. If all seems well then install the crontab from
/usr/share/doc/debbugs/examples/crontab.

Notes:

Each line of /etc/debbugs/Maintainers file needs to be formatted like
this: "package       maintainer name <e-mail@address>".

If you need a template, look in /usr/share/doc/debbugs/examples/ directory.

=============================================================================
FURTHER INFORMATION
=============================================================================
Web:  http://benham.net/debbugs/
Email: debian-debbugs@lists.debian.org (mailing list)
       debian-debbugs-request@lists.debian.org with the word subscribe in the
       subject line

=============================================================================
COPYRIGHT AND LACK-OF-WARRANTY NOTICE
=============================================================================
Copyright 1999 Darren O. Benham <gecko@debian.org>
Copyright 1994,1995,1996,1997 Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>
Copyright 1997 nCipher Corporation Limited

This bug system is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free
Software Foundation; version 2 of the License.

This program and documentation is distributed in the hope that it will be
useful, but without any warranty; without even the implied warranty of
merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. See the GNU General
Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along
with this program, or one should be available above; if not, write to the
Free Software Foundation, 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA
02111-1307, USA.

 - Darren Benham 14 Oct, 1999
