GNATs doesn't support GNATSWEB queries

[Jason Curl]

When using the default GNATs (v4.1.0) from Ubuntu, queries using Gnatsweb doesn't work.

In particular, gnatsweb does the following query against gnatsd:
  expr ((! builtinfield:State[type]="closed")) & (Category~"^logger$")

With the version of gnats that comes from Ubuntu 11.10, the result is
  415 Invalid expression

Note that "logger" is the name of the category. There appears to be no workaround available by modifying the gnatsweb.pl source.

When I downloaded the gnats-4.1.0 source direct from GNU, and compiled it with the following option:
CFLAGS="-g -O2" LDFLAGS="-Wl,-Bsymbolic-functions" ./configure
  --prefix=/usr --includedir="/usr/include" --mandir="/usr/share/man"
  --infodir="/usr/share/info" --sysconfdir=/etc --localstatedir=/var
  --libexecdir=/usr/lib
  --with-gnats-root=/var/lib/gnats/gnats-db
  --with-gnats-service=gnats
  --with-gnats-default-db=/var/lib/gnats/gnats-db
  --with-gnatsd-user-access-file=/etc/gnats/gnatsd.user_access
  --with-gnatsd-host-access-file=/etc/gnats/gnatsd.host_access
  --with-gnats-dblist-file=/etc/gnats/databases
  --with-lispdir=/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/gnats

and replace the binary "gnatsd" with that we've just compiled, everything works as expected. I only replaced the gnatsd binary.

root@octavia:~# lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 11.10
Release: 11.10

root@octavia:~# lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 11.10
Release: 11.10
root@octavia:~# apt-cache policy gnats
gnats:
  Installed: 4.1.0-1
  Candidate: 4.1.0-1
  Version table:
 *** 4.1.0-1 0
        500 http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric/universe i386 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Jason Curl (jcurl)]

I can say that this problem is resolved on Ubuntu 16.04. Unfortunately, it doesn't come with GNATSWEB anymore, so you have to download it manually. But when you do, the packaging works as expected. So I'll close this as resolved in 16.04