[darcs-users] darcswatch ideas (Was: growing the darcs team)

[Joachim Breitner]

Hi,

Am Montag, den 01.09.2008, 16:16 -0700 schrieb Jason Dagit:
> Perhaps running a second instance of roundup that is just for patch
> tracking wouldn't be a bad idea?  Maybe we need to modify darcs watch?
>  I like that patches can be submitted via email and that they can be
> commented on via email, these are great features, but I think we need
> something that brings it all together and *tracks* the patches
> w/feedback.  If I were maintainer I would want something like this.  I
> simply wouldn't be able to track everything in just my email client.
> This makes sense since my email client was designed with email in mind
> not darcs.  I want to adopt a system with consensus and agreement.  I
> don't believe in the current model therefore we already lack consensus
> in the current system :)

I was pointed to this thread by kowey, so I’ll comment on it.

For a while I thought darcswatch was essentially useless because after a
while, it’s just a huge pile of patches. But recently it was used on the
xmonad list to get a list of interesting, but unapplied patches and
re-start discussion on that, so I’m slightly more interested again. I’m
even trying to debug why it crashes sometimes, leaving a stale lock :-)

Anyways, what features would be required to make it more useful, and how
can add them? Note that I’d like to keep the architecture of interacting
with darcswatch by sending mails, and of having static files as the
output. (Mostly because I’d like to keep it simple, predictable and easy
to keep running).

darcswatch already is subscribed to the list, so it could easily save
and list all mails that are sent in reply to a patch. Or at least, to
save disk space, list the message IDs. Is there a good way to go from a
messgae id (20080901212828.GI35911%40Macintosh.local) to an archive url
(http://lists.osuosl.org/pipermail/darcs-users/2008-September/013403.html)?

Then we could additionally have darcswatch check the subject or mail for
keywords like "reviewed", similar to how we currently support "obsolete"
and "rejected", and easily get a listing of all reviewed, but unapplied
patches. We could also gather statistics on the reviewers.

All these mails can (and should) still go via the mailing list, so there
is no unnecessary separation and all ongoing work is still easily
monitored by reading the mailing list.


But I guess before going in to the details: Is a mail based app actually
welcome? I’m heavily debian based, where the debian bug tracking system
is fully mail based, and it’s great, but of course it’s a slightly
higher entry barrier.

Greetings,
Joachim

-- 
Joachim "nomeata" Breitner
  mail: mail at joachim-breitner.de | ICQ# 74513189 | GPG-Key: 4743206C
  JID: nomeata at joachim-breitner.de | http://www.joachim-breitner.de/
  Debian Developer: nomeata at debian.org
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