Bug subscription

Important

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Launchpad uses notification emails and Atom feeds to help you stay on top of the bugs that interest you.

Bug mail

There are three ways to get bug notifications by email:

  • subscribe to a bug

  • subscribe to a milestone, project, package or distribution

  • take a role that results in bug mail:

    • bug reporter

    • assignee

Subscribing to an individual bug is as simple clicking Subscribe on the bug report page. You can also subscribe another individual or a team to a bug. However, you should only do this if you’re certain the person or team members are happy for you to do so.

What you’ll receive

Launchpad sends bug notifications when:

  • a new bug is reported

  • someone makes a comment on a bug

  • a bug’s status or importance changes

  • a bug is assigned to someone

  • a bug is targeted to a milestone

  • a bug is marked as affecting a new series, package or project.

You can filter bug mail based on both the subject and headers. A prefix of [NEW] in the subject lets you distinguish emails about newly reported bugs from updates about previous bugs.

Bug mail headers

Launchpad uses email headers to help you automatically filter bug mail.

  • X-Launchpad-Bug: See the X-Launchpad-Bug section below.

  • X-Launchpad-Bug-Private: yes or no

  • X-Launchpad-Bug-Security-Vulnerability: yes or no

  • X-Launchpad-Bug-Commenters: An alphabetical, space separated, list of everyone who has commented on the bug.

  • X-Launchpad-Bug-Reporter: The username of the person who reported the bug and created its first bug task.

  • X-Launchpad-Bug-Modifier: The display name and username of the person who modified the bug, in the form Display Name (username).

  • X-Launchpad-Bug-Tags: An alphabetical, space separated, list of tags the bug currently possesses.

  • X-Launchpad-Bug-Duplicate: If the bug is a duplicate, this header is set to the number of the duplicate target bug.

  • X-Launchpad-Message-Rationale: See the Bug mail rationale section below.

X-Launchpad-Bug

The X-Launchpad-Bug header collates most of the other information about a bug’s status, importance, etc. It gives you slightly different information, depending on whether you’re dealing with a distribution package or a project:

Project

  • product

  • status

  • importance

  • assignee

  • For example: X-Launchpad-Bug: product=terminator; status=Confirmed; importance=Low; assignee=None;

Package

  • distribution

  • sourcepackage`

  • component

  • status

  • importance

  • assignee

  • For example: X-Launchpad-Bug: distribution=ubuntu; sourcepackage=exaile; component=universe; status=Confirmed; importance=Medium; assignee=None;

Bug mail rationale

The X-Launchpad-Message-Rationale header tells you why you’ve received the notification.

You can be either:

  • Assignee

  • Subscriber

  • Registrant

For example: X-Launchpad-Message-Rationale: Assignee

An @ symbol shows that you’re related to the bug through membership of a team:

X-Launchpad-Message-Rationale: Assignee @ubuntu-kernel-bugs
X-Launchpad-Message-Rationale: Subscriber @ubuntu-core-dev

If you’re the project/package owner, the product/package name is show in parentheses:

X-Launchpad-Message-Rationale: Registrant (kiwi)

If the notification is about a duplicate bug, the rationale shows you which bug this report duplicates:

X-Launchpad-Message-Rationale: Assignee via Bug 1332

This makes it easy to filter out bug mail about duplicate bugs. For example: let’s say this bug notification is for bug 2129. This header means you are the assignee of bug 1332, of which 2129 is a duplicate.

Atom feeds

You can subscribe to a feed of the bugs that affect a person, team, project or distribution. You can also subscribe to individual bugs.

Most feed readers will automatically discover the bug feed if you give them the URL of the bug report or the person, team, project or distribution overview page.

Alternatively, you can build the bug feed URL by hand:

Individual bugs:

http://feeds.launchpad.net/bugs/<bug>/bug.atom

Replace <bug> with the bug number.

For example: http://feeds.launchpad.net/bugs/1/bug.atom

Projects and distributions:

http://feeds.launchpad.net/<project>/latest-bugs.atom

Replace <project> accordingly.

For example: http://feeds.launchpad.net/ubuntu/latest-bugs.atom

People and teams:

http://feeds.launchpad.net/~<project>/latest-bugs.atom

Replace <project> accordingly.

For example: http://feeds.launchpad.net/~bzr/latest-bugs.atom

Further information

As well as using email to send updates about the status of bugs, Launchpad gives you a full email interface to the bug tracker.