On Thu, Apr 29 2021, Junio C Hamano wrote: > Derrick Stolee <stolee@xxxxxxxxx> writes: > >> On 4/28/2021 12:26 PM, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote: >>> Simplify the setup code in repo-settings.c in various ways, making the >>> code shorter, easier to read, and requiring fewer hacks to do the same >>> thing as it did before: >> >> This patch is interesting, and I'll review it when I have some more >> time. Probably tomorrow. >> >> But I thought that I would point out that this pattern of adding a >> patch within the thread of a larger series makes it very difficult >> to separate the two. I use an email client that groups messages by >> thread in order to help parse meaningful discussion from the list >> which otherwise looks like a fire hose of noise. Now, this patch is >> linked to the FS Monitor thread and feedback to either will trigger >> the thread as having unread messages. >> >> I find it very difficult to track multiple patch series that are >> being juggled in the same thread. It is mentally taxing enough that >> I have avoided reviewing code presented this way to save myself the >> effort of tracking which patches go with what topic in what order. > > I do find it distracting to have a full "ah, I just thought of > something while discussing this unrelated series" patch fairly > irritating for the same reason. It however is unavoidable human > nature that we come up with ideas while thinking about something not > necessarily related. So it largely is a presentation issue. > > I really appreciate the way some people (Peff is a stellar example, > but there are others who are as good at this) handle these tangents, > where the message sent to an existing thread is limited to only give > an outline of the idea (possibly with "something like this?" patch > for illustration) and then they quickly get out of the way of the > discussion by starting a separate thread, while back-referencing "So > here is a proper patch based on the idea I interjected in the > discussion of that other topic." And the discussion on the tangent > will be done on its own thread. In RFC 822 terms. Are you talking about the In-Reply-To[1] or References[2] headers, or both/neither? I'm happy to go along with whatever the convention is, but as noted think it's valuable to come to some explicit decision to document the convention. Threading isn't a concept that exists in E-Mail protocols per-se. Just In-Reply-To and References. The References header can reference N messages most would think about as a separate "thread", and "thread" is ultimately some fuzzy MUA-specific concept on top of these (and others). E.g. in my client right now I'm looking at just 4 messages in this "thread", it doesn't descend down the whole In-Reply-To, others would act differently. Some (such as GMail) have their own ad-hoc concept of "thread" separate from anything in RFCs (which includes some fuzzy group-by-subject). In GMail's web UI everything as of my "upthread" <patch-1.1-e1d8c842c70-20210428T161817Z-avarab@xxxxxxxxx> is presented as its own thread. The ML read as it happens, but it's also a collectively maintained datastructure. It seems to me to be better to veer on the side of using standard fields for their intended purpose for archiving / future use. I.e. making "a reference" universally machine-readable, as opposed to a lore.kernel.org link, or a free-form "in a recent thread" blurb. ML Archive Formats Matter[3] :) But yes, maybe MUAs in the wild these days mostly render things one way or another, so catering to them would be a good trade-off. I'm writing this from within an Emacs MUA, so I don't have much of a feel for common MUA conventions these days. I'm prodding to see if we can define the problem exactly, because e.g. maybe "References: <break@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> [actual <references>]" is something that would achieve both aims, i.e. make the references machine-readable, but break up threading in common in-the-wild clients. We could then patch format-patch etc. to support such "detached" threading. 1. https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc822#section-4.6.2 2. https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc822#section-4.6.3 3. https://keithp.com/blogs/Repository_Formats_Matter/
