[+cc Eric for some possible public-inbox wisdom] On Mon, Jul 01, 2024 at 01:40:18PM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote: > > There's some more discussion from a similar case that came up a month > > ago: > > > > https://lore.kernel.org/git/20240529102307.GF1098944@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/ > > Thanks. I wonder if there is a way to add this kind of pieces of > information to old commits and discussion threads around it after > the fact, and if it helps us (like Dscho who wondered why we decided > if it is a good idea, and more importantly if we still think it is a > good idea and why). > > ... and then goes back to see the original discussion thread, > with the "bright idea" that I could just follow up on 14-year > old discussion thread. Only to find that despite what Dscho > said, the commit message does say why it is desirable ("to > imitate remote transport well") already. > > So, I guess we do not really need to do such a post-annotation in > this particular case, but I think after seeing somebody posting a > message like the one I am responding to and finding it helpful, it > would be helpful if somebody can post a message pointing at it as a > response to the old thread that wants a post-annotation. Usually I find myself digging backwards in history, following links to old threads. But I guess what you are asking is how would somebody looking at old thread XYZ know that it was mentioned much later. And I think the solution is for the new thread to just link to the old one by message-id (i.e., the usual lore links). And then searching for that message-id in the archive could turn up the later threads. I don't know how well public-inbox handles that in practice, though: 1. Do things that look like message-ids get searched for in message bodies? I'd think so if you don't explicitly say "this is a message id". 2. It's really a multi-element search. If I have a thread with 10 messages, I'd really like to know of more recent threads that linked back to _any_ message in the thread. You'd probably have to feed them all manually. But in theory indexing could generate some kind of bidirectional "related" link. I don't often do this with message-ids, but I frequently do find other references by doing a full-text search for commit hashes, or phrases from commit subjects. I usually do so with my local notmuch archive, rather than using public-inbox, but I think you should be able to do phrase searches there, too. -Peff
