mbug

Rationale

This program makes working with old Debian bugs much more pleasant. Sometimes I want to have personal bug-squashing party, so you open [https://bugs.debian.org/kaction@gnu.org] in web-browser, and get nice list of bugs that require my attention.

Browsing is great, but when I want to do something with those bugs -- close, add tags, discuss, I have to copy bug number, launch mail client in another terminal and compose email to [mailto:nnn@bugs.debian.org].

Should I need to quote some previous message, more distracting actions are to be done -- download whole bug as mbox, incorporate that mbox into my mail system (I prefer MH), and only after that real work could start.

DebBugs has also email interface -- you can request sending to you bugs you want, but reply is also optimized for reading, not for manipulating. Honestly, it looks like corresponding web page, filtered by lynx.

Solution

mbug [--into <folder>] <query>

It will download mbox of every bug, listed at https://bugs.debian.org/<query> and create +<folder> MH folder. In that folder subfolder for every bug is created. By default, <folder> is debbugs.

Folder +<folder> is volatile, every new invocation of mbox will overwrite its previous content. This way you can focus on bugs you are interested in right now.