Debian BTS Client (DeBTS)

A GTK3 desktop client for the Debian Bug Tracking System. It sends bug reports, replies, and control@bugs.debian.org commands over your own IMAP/SMTP mail account - and for reading and searching, it opens the real bugs.debian.org in an embedded browser tab, so you're always looking at the actual site, not a scraped copy.

Styling is made to be like tracker.debian.org

Features

• First run: log in with your mail account, or continue as a guest (guest mode can still browse and search, it just can't send mail).
• Bug list: bugs found in your mail folder, plus (once logged in) bugs tied to your email pulled from the public UDD mirror (udd-mirror.debian.net) a structured, public copy of Debian's own bug database, not scraped HTML, with an All/Open/Done filter and a "jump to bug #" box.
• Browse BTS tab: a real embedded browser (WebKit) pointed at bugs.debian.org. Search results, bug pages, everything, it's the actual site. When the page you're on is a bug report, a floating toolbar appears with Reply, Retitle, Severity, and More Commands buttons that open the matching native form, pre-filled with that bug's number.
• Search window: the same filters pkgreport.cgi supports (package, source, maintainer, submitter, severity, status, tag, owner) hitting Search opens the real results page in the Browse tab.
• File a new bug: package chooser (editable dropdown of Debian's pseudo-packages, with an (i) button linking to Debian's explanation page), version, severity, title, body, and a template picker (bug report, feature request, FTBFS, ITP, RFP, orphan) - submitted to submit@bugs.debian.org.
• Control command builder: every common control@bugs.debian.org command (retitle, reassign, severity, tags, usertags, merge, forcemerge, unmerge, clone, block/unblock, affects, forwarded, owner, submitter, archive, found/fixed and their inverses, close, reopen, ...). Queue several commands and send them as one batch email, or hand-edit the raw text directly.
• Settings: IMAP/SMTP host, port, SSL, credentials, and which folder to scan for BTS mail, stored in ~/.config/debts/config.ini (0600 permissions, since it holds your mail password).

Building

Dependencies: GTK3, WebKit2GTK 4.1 (or 4.0), libcurl, and libpq (PostgreSQL client library, used for UDD queries).

# Debian/Ubuntu
sudo apt install build-essential libgtk-3-dev libwebkit2gtk-4.1-dev \
                  libcurl4-openssl-dev libpq-dev pkg-config

make
./debts

make checks for all of these up front and tells you exactly what's missing and how to install it, rather than failing partway through with a wall of header errors.

make install installs the binary to /usr/bin/debts and the stylesheet to /usr/share/debts/style.css (respects DESTDIR).

First-time setup

On first launch you'll see a Log In With Email / Continue as Guest screen. Guest mode is enough to browse and search bugs.debian.org; logging in also lets you send mail and see bugs tied to your address.

If you log in or open Settings later:

1. Incoming (IMAP) tab: your mail server, port (993/IMAPS by default), username/password, and which folder to scan for BTS traffic. It's worth filtering mail from *@bugs.debian.org into its own folder and pointing this there.
2. Outgoing (SMTP) tab: your mail server, port (587/STARTTLS or 465/SMTPS), and credentials.
3. Identity tab: your name and, importantly, the email address you file bugs under - the BTS identifies you by From: address, not by password, so this needs to match the account you're sending through.

Known limitations

• Bug status/package/severity in the local bug list are best-effort where they come from your own mail folder, guessed heuristically from subject lines like "marked as done". Entries pulled in because you're logged in come from the public UDD mirror and are accurate, structured data straight from Debian's own bug database - no scraping involved.
• Refresh re-scans the whole configured folder on every click (no incremental sync/caching of read state).
• Passwords are stored in plaintext in config.ini (0600 permissions only). Consider an app-specific password if your provider supports one.
• Pseudo-package list in the New Bug dropdown is a curated subset of https://www.debian.org/Bugs/pseudo-packages - real package names can still be typed in directly, the field is a free-text combo.
• The embedded browser disables GPU-accelerated compositing (WEBKIT_DISABLE_COMPOSITING_MODE=1 plus the matching WebKitSettings policy), since accelerated compositing has been a source of hard crashes on some GPU driver stacks. If you still hit a crash, a gdb backtrace (gdb -ex run -ex bt --args ./debts) is the fastest way to track it down further.

License

GPL-3.0 (see LICENSE). Copyright (C) 2026 Damian Daniel damian@danielovci.net.