Re: Our cumbersome mailing list workflow

On Fri, Nov 28, 2014 at 04:34:09PM +0100, Michael Haggerty wrote:

My ideal would be to invert the procedure. Let the patches in a public
Git repository somewhere be the primary artifact, and let the review
process be focused there. Let email be an alternative interface to the
central review site:

* Generate patch emails (similar to the current format) when pull
requests are submitted.

* Generate notification emails when people comment on the patches.

* Allow people to respond to the patch and notification emails via
email. The central review site should associate those comments with the
patches that they apply to, and present them along with other review
comments received via other interfaces.

I think these are good goals.  Even as a semi-regular contributor, I
prefer to push branches around using Git rather than formatting patches
and mailing them.

Also, I think that being able to comment on a patch or report a bug
without a login (via email) is desirable.  I'm not a fan of having to
have an account on every Bugzilla on the planet.  That's why I like
debbugs.

It seems like a few desirable features are being talked about here, and
summarizing the discussion as "centralized" vs "decentralized" is too
simplistic. What is really important?

1. Convenient and efficient, including for newcomers
2. Usable while offline
3. Usable in pure-text mode
4. Decentralized

I think 1 is definitely important.  For me personally, 2 isn't very
important, as all my email is via IMAP (so I have to be online).  I
think 3 is important for accessibility reasons.  There are a lot of
blind or low-sighted people for whom a GUI is infeasible or burdensome.

Something else?

It might be useful to have a system that has a bug or issue tracker.  We
often have posts to the mailing list that don't get a response, even
though those may represent legitimate bugs (code or documentation).
-- 
brian m. carlson / brian with sandals: Houston, Texas, US
+1 832 623 2791 | http://www.crustytoothpaste.net/~bmc | My opinion only
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