Re: Our cumbersome mailing list workflow

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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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