The categories file

The `categories' file contains a list of problem categories, specific to your site, which GNATS tracks. This file also matches responsible people with these categories. You must edit this file initially, creating valid categories and then running mkcat to create the corresponding subdirectories of GNATS_ROOT and update the valid categories list for send-pr. For instructions on running mkcat, see section Adding a problem category.

To create a new category, log in as GNATS, add a line to this file, and run mkcat. Lines beginning with `#' are ignored.

A line in the `categories' file consists of four fields delimited by colons, as follows:

category:description:responsible:notify

category

A unique category name, made up of text characters. This name cannot contain spaces or any of the following characters:

! $ & * ( ) { } [ ] ` ' " ; : < > ~

Ideally, category names should not contain commas or begin with periods. Each line has a corresponding subdirectory in the main GNATS directory (GNATS_ROOT).

description

A terse textual description of the category.

responsible

The name tag of the party responsible for this category of problems, as listed in the `responsible' file (see section The responsible file).

notify

One or more other parties which should be notified when a Problem Report with this category arrives, such as a project manager, other members of the same project, other interested parties, or even log files. These should be separated with commas.

A good strategy for configuring this file is to have a different category for each product your organization supports or wishes to track information for, or perhaps with sub-categories within each category. For instance, if you wish to track documentation problems in a variety of areas, you could have entries such as

doc:General Doc Questions:myboss:me,barney
doc-rock:Doc for ROCK program:me:myboss
doc-stone:Docs for STONE utils:barney:fred
doc-local:in-house documentation:me:doc-local-log

In the above example, the nametags `myboss', `me', `fred', and `barney' must be defined in the `responsible' file (see section The responsible file).

Problem Reports with a category of `doc' are sent to the local mail address (or alias) `myboss', and also sent to the addresses `me' and `barney'. PRs with a category of `doc-rock' are sent to the local addresses `me' and `myboss' only, while PRs with the category `doc-stone' are sent to `fred' as well as to `barney'. PRs with a category of `doc-local' are sent only to `me', and are also filed in doc-local-log (in this case, an alias should be set up in `/etc/aliases' to reflect a location for the log file, such as `doc-local-log: /users/me/local-log').

Whenever you add a new category, be sure to run mkcat to create a subdirectory for it and update the local categories list.

Only one category must be present for GNATS to function:

pending:Category for faulty PRs: gnats-admin:

The `pending' directory is created automatically when you run `make install' (see section Configuring and compiling the software).

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