Re: [RFC PATCH 2/4] doc: gitbreaking-changes: replace msg-ids with URLs

From: Kristoffer Haugsbakk <kristofferhaugsbakk@fastmail.com>
Date: Oct 3, 2026, 11:52 UTC
Message-ID: <533e2f52-2c9c-459a-9fa1-dff3ef4bb2f9@app.fastmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqeceaa5h9.fsf@gitster.g>

On Wed, Sep 30, 2026, at 21:45, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 25 quoted lines

> Patrick Steinhardt <ps@pks.im> writes:
>> On Mon, Sep 28, 2026 at 12:41:26PM +0200, kristofferhaugsbakk@fastmail.com wrote:
>>> From: Kristoffer Haugsbakk <code@khaugsbakk.name>
>>>[snip]
>>
>> Fair. The links may of course break if at any point in time
>> lore.kernel.org were to vanish or change its interface. But if so we can
>> adapt accordingly, also because the message ID can still be extracted
>> trivially.
>
> One caveat is that some "funny characters" in message IDs need to be
> URL-encoded.
>
> A recent example I saw was <20260930061524.GNkIK%taahol@utu.fi>;
> https://lore.kernel.org/git/20260930061524.GNkIK%25taahol@utu.fi/ is
> the URL you need to visit to view the message.
>
> Having said that, I am somewhat negative on what this particular
> patch does.  We should instead give both, having something like
>
>  cf.
> https://lore.kernel.org/git/xmqqa59i45wc.fsf@gitster.g/[<xmqqa59i45wc.fsf@gitster.g>^]
>
> in the source, and render a readable link text with reachable href
> when shown in the browser.

With that I get a regular `href` and a `mailto` href.

    <div class="paragraph"><p>cf. <a href="https://lore.kernel.org/git/xmqqa59i45wc.fsf@gitster.g/">&lt;<a href="mailto:xmqqa59i45wc.fsf@gitster.g">xmqqa59i45wc.fsf@gitster.g</a>&gt;^</a></p></div>

The `mailto` wins and prepares to send an email.

For HTML output at least (I haven’t tested man yet) you can use `&commat;`:

    cf. https://lore.kernel.org/git/xmqqa59i45wc.fsf@gitster.g/[<xmqqa59i45wc.fsf&commat;gitster.g>^]

And that works.

But with this rendered output:

    • Support for core.commentString=auto has been deprecated and will
      be removed in Git 3.0.

      cf. <xmqqa59i45wc.fsf@gitster.g>^

You have an exceptionally short (cf. UUID monstrosity) msg-id, like all your msg-ids,[1] to the point that it looks as long as an email address but more random-looking and with a weird domain name. And the exception for email addresses (looking) that are formatted as links are that they are `mailto` links. So what would the expectation be for someone who hasn’t read a preamble about what these things with @-symbols are? That they are contact addresses perhaps?

I don’t think this is an improvement. Now people unaccustomed to using msg-ids have to be cognizant of these things as links (not as weird email addresses), which is even assuming that they read the preamble. But with regular URLs you don’t even need a preamble.

As for the man format: my terminal lets me open links.

Maybe we should drop this patch if we disagree that either choice here is an improvement.

† 1: 3/11 of the existing msg-ids are from the maintainer