Reworked Command Line Interface for RT3

RT Developers
1

Hi,

I have taken the latest rt-3.2.2/bin/rt.in CLI and modified it to make it
more useable.
You can fetch it at http://www-zeuthen.desy.de/~friebel/ldap/rt.in

With the modified CLI I can simply say

rt ls

and get output similar to the sample below (resembles the old req/reqng)

Ticket Owner Queue Age Told Status Requestor Subject
118674 helge UCO-Z 1 mth open Wolfgang. Request Tracker usage
…
123279 UCO-Z 23 hr 23 hr open ines.wert /afs/xxx.de/group/nic/ Input/
123375 UCO-Z 2 hr new rroeser@x gvim in Wincenter
…

To show ticket 123375 the command

rt show 123375

producesDate: Wed Sep 29 14:53:08 2004
From: rroeser@xxx.de
Cc: uco@xxx.de
X-Queue: UCO-Z
Subject: [rt #ticket/123375] gvim in Wincenter

===>Ticket created by sboeser@xxx.de on Fri Oct 29 14:53:10 2004
Hi UCO,

would it be possible to…
…

===>Given to helges by friebel on Fri Oct 29 16:58:41 2004

The main changes are to identify tickets always by its numbers only,
to change the default output format for the ls and show handlers to a
“prettyprint” format and to add reasonable defaults when formulating
queries for the “ls” action.

The online help has been updated to reflect the changes I made.
In the hope that it might be useful to someone I do attach the modified
CLI, which is also running with RT 3.0
(We are actually using it together with rt 3.0.11)

Wolfgang Friebel
Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY | Phone: +49 33762 77372 |
Platanenallee 6 | Fax: +49 33762 77216 |
D-15738 Zeuthen Germany | E-Mail: Wolfgang.Friebel@desy.de |

2

back in 2004 I did post the availability of an enhanced CLI for RT. At
that time it was made for rt-3.2.2.

Since then it was constantly updated and kept in sync at or site with the
official bin/rt.in found in the releases. I would like to take the
opportunity to send the latest patch with the enhancements for version
3.8.1 to the list (see attachment). The CLI should be compatible with
basically all 3.x servers, there is no need to have the same server
version installed.

The patch does contain enhancements only. These are:

  • support for Kerberos5 authentication using LWP::Authen::Negotiate
  • warn if a passwort is transmitted to the server
  • a default queue for ls can be configured or given on the command line
  • simplified query string notation on the command line
  • the default output format for ls is more compact and tabular (80 cols)
  • the default output format for show is more compact
  • tickets get addressed by just the ticket number
  • new commands for frequently needed edit commands (set status, set owner,
    …) were introduced (resolve, delete, take, …)
  • enhanced online help describing the modified commands and giving more
    examples

A very common operation is resolving a ticket, which can be done now using
a simple command such as

rt resolve 3456

The enhanced CLI is in production at our site since several years. It
nicely complements the web and the mail interface which we are using as
well. Due to the changed functionality its acceptance has increased a lot.
Wolfgang Friebel Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY
Phone/Fax: +49 33762 77372/216 Platanenallee 6
Mail: Wolfgang.Friebel AT desy.de D-15738 Zeuthen Germany

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