send-pr
from within Emacs
You can use an interactive send-pr
interface from within GNU
Emacs to fill out your Problem Report. We recommend that you
familiarize yourself with Emacs before using this feature
(see section `Introduction' in GNU Emacs).
Call send-pr
with `M-x send-pr'.(1) send-pr
responds with a
Problem Report template preconfigured for the Support Site from which
you received send-pr
. (If you use send-pr
locally, the
default Support Site is probably your local site.)
You may also submit problem reports to different Support Sites from the
default site. To use this feature, invoke send-pr
with
C-u M-x send-pr
send-pr
prompts you for the name of a site. site is
an alias on your local machine which points to an alternate Support
Site.
send-pr
displays the template and prompts you in the minibuffer
with the line:
>Category: other
Delete the default value `other' in the minibuffer and
replace it with the keyword corresponding to your problem (the list of
valid categories is in the topmost section of the PR template). For
example, if the problem you wish to report has to do with the GNU C
compiler, and your support organization accepts bugs submitted for this
program under the category `gcc', delete `other' and then type
`gcc[RET]'. send-pr
replaces the line
>Category: <name of the product (one line)>
in the template with
>Category: gcc
and moves on to another field.
send-pr
provides name completion in the minibuffer. For
instance, you can also type `gc[TAB]', and send-pr
attempts to complete the entry for you. Typing `g[TAB]'
may not have the same effect if several possible entries begin with
`g'. In that case send-pr
cannot complete the entry because
it cannot determine whether you mean `gcc' or, for example,
`gdb', if both of those are possible categories.
send-pr
continues to prompt you for a valid entry until you
enter one.
send-pr
prompts you interactively to enter each field for
which there is a range of specific choices. If you attempt to enter a
value which is not in the range of acceptable entries, send-pr
responds with `[No match]' and allows you to change the entry
until it contains an acceptable value. This avoids unusable information
(at least in these fields) and also avoids typographical errors which
could cause problems later.
send-pr
prompts you for the following fields:
>Category:
>Confidential: (default: no)
>Severity: (default: serious)
>Priority: (default: medium)
>Class: (default: sw-bug)
>Release:
>Synopsis: (this value is copied to Subject:
)
After you complete these fields, send-pr
places the cursor in
the `>Description:' field and displays the message
To send the problem report use: C-c C-c
in the minibuffer. At this point, edit the file in the main buffer to reflect your specific problem, putting relevant information in the proper fields. See section An Example, for a sample Problem Report.
`send-pr' provides a few key bindings to make moving around in a template buffer more simple:
C-c C-f
M-x change-field
edit-pr
prompts you for a
new value.
M-C-b
M-x prms-backward-field
M-C-f
M-x prms-forward-field
M-p
M-x prms-previous-field
M-n
M-x prms-next-field
send-pr
takes over again when you type `C-c C-c' to send the
message. send-pr
reports any errors in a separate buffer, which
remains in existence until you send the PR properly (or, of course,
until you explicitly kill the buffer).
For detailed instructions on using Emacs, see section `Introduction' in GNU Emacs.