From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Mon, 01 Jul 2024 22:25:41 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH] setup: support GIT_IGNORE_INSECURE_OWNER environment variable
Message-ID: <20240701222541.GC20683@coredump.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqplrwvob1.fsf@gitster.g>

[+cc Eric for some possible public-inbox wisdom]

On Mon, Jul 01, 2024 at 01:40:18PM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:

> > There's some more discussion from a similar case that came up a month
> > ago:
> >
> >   https://lore.kernel.org/git/20240529102307.GF1098944@coredump.intra.peff.net/
> 
> Thanks.  I wonder if there is a way to add this kind of pieces of
> information to old commits and discussion threads around it after
> the fact, and if it helps us (like Dscho who wondered why we decided
> if it is a good idea, and more importantly if we still think it is a
> good idea and why).
> 
>     ... and then goes back to see the original discussion thread,
>     with the "bright idea" that I could just follow up on 14-year
>     old discussion thread.  Only to find that despite what Dscho
>     said, the commit message does say why it is desirable ("to
>     imitate remote transport well") already.
> 
> So, I guess we do not really need to do such a post-annotation in
> this particular case, but I think after seeing somebody posting a
> message like the one I am responding to and finding it helpful, it
> would be helpful if somebody can post a message pointing at it as a
> response to the old thread that wants a post-annotation.

Usually I find myself digging backwards in history, following links to
old threads. But I guess what you are asking is how would somebody
looking at old thread XYZ know that it was mentioned much later.

And I think the solution is for the new thread to just link to the old
one by message-id (i.e., the usual lore links). And then searching for
that message-id in the archive could turn up the later threads. I don't
know how well public-inbox handles that in practice, though:

  1. Do things that look like message-ids get searched for in message
     bodies? I'd think so if you don't explicitly say "this is a message
     id".

  2. It's really a multi-element search. If I have a thread with 10
     messages, I'd really like to know of more recent threads that
     linked back to _any_ message in the thread. You'd probably have to
     feed them all manually. But in theory indexing could generate some
     kind of bidirectional "related" link.

I don't often do this with message-ids, but I frequently do find other
references by doing a full-text search for commit hashes, or phrases
from commit subjects. I usually do so with my local notmuch archive,
rather than using public-inbox, but I think you should be able to do
phrase searches there, too.

-Peff