Re: Cross-referencing the Git mailing list archive with their corresponding commits in `pu`

From: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Date: Feb 9, 2017, 21:53 UTC
Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.2.20.1702092242120.3496@virtualbox>
In-Reply-To: <3F7E4C9E-593E-4FC5-B820-E6A0CDEB7476@gmail.com>

Hi Lars,

On Thu, 9 Feb 2017, Lars Schneider wrote:

Show 19 quoted lines

> > On 06 Feb 2017, at 20:10, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
> > 
> > Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> writes:
> > 
> >> So I thought maybe the From: line (from the body, if available,
> >> otherwise from the header) in conjunction with the "Date:" header
> >> would work.
> > 
> > FYI, I use a post-applypatch hook to populate refs/notes/amlog notes
> > tree when I queue a new patch; I am not sure how well the notes in it
> > are preserved across rebases, but it could be a good starting point.
> > The notes tree is mirrored at git://github.com/git/gitster repository.
> > 
> > E.g.
> > 
> > $ git show --notes=amlog --stat
> 
> That's super useful! Thanks for the pointer!
> Wouldn't it make sense to push these notes to github.com/git/git ?

I am not quite sure about that. It is in a different namespace than what is usually cloned, and it currently adds 8MB to the download (there are "amlog" and "commits", the latter clearly being a sandbox).

While I am thankful that there is at least some information available for patches integrated into `pu` since Nov 1 2016, the format is probably not stable (we are talking about free-form notes, after all), and it still does not help with catching the case where new patch series iterations (or in some case, new patch series, period) are missed.

Make no mistake, it will be a huge undertaking to develop a tool that helps with the management of patch series on top of the mailing list driven patch review process. And even in the best case, it may be simply too hard for an automated tool to figure things out e.g. when Peff or Junio paste a tangentially related diff into a thread.

In the end, what I *really* would love to have is a system where you can easily query "which reviewer comments on *any* of my patch series are new, or still unaddressed?", and "in what way was my patch modified relative to the latest version I submitted?". It may actually be impossible to create such a tool, as it cannot invent information/cross-references that it does not have nor can deduce from available data.

Ciao, Johannes