Separate Mailing Lists for Patches vs General Dev Discussion?

Separate Mailing Lists for Patches vs General Dev Discussion?

[Florian Paul Schmidt]

Hi,

I'm following the Guix-Project, even if not contributing much because of 
time constraints. The one, very simple to implement, thing that would 
make following the project more easy IMHO would be a separate list for 
patches. Or maybe the other way around: A separate list for more general 
discussion :)

What do you think?

Regards,
Flo

Re: Separate Mailing Lists for Patches vs General Dev Discussion?

[ng0]

Hi,

Florian Paul Schmidt writes:

> Hi,
>
> I'm following the Guix-Project, even if not contributing much because
> of time constraints. The one, very simple to implement, thing that
> would make following the project more easy IMHO would be a separate
> list for patches. Or maybe the other way around: A separate list for
> more general discussion :)
>
> What do you think?
>
> Regards,
> Flo
>

I don't know if that's a fix.
In my opinion we need a web application which is smart enough to
figure out what patches are and append the discussion around it
there, but it needs to offer ways to not just display this but
to contribute to the discussion in a webbrowser for example.

That's of course not our core problem, but it could make it a bit
more appealing.

I would say we could keep "guix-devel" for patches and
discussions around them and create another list for discussion,
for example "guix-discuss".

No fix, but could help to separate patches and general
discussions.

What do you all think?
-- 
♥Ⓐ  ng0
Current Keys: https://we.make.ritual.n0.is/ng0.txt
For non-prism friendly talk find me on http://www.psyced.org

Re: Separate Mailing Lists for Patches vs General Dev Discussion?

[Andreas Enge]

On Tue, Jul 26, 2016 at 10:44:48AM +0000, ng0 wrote:
> I would say we could keep "guix-devel" for patches and
> discussions around them and create another list for discussion,
> for example "guix-discuss".
> No fix, but could help to separate patches and general
> discussions.

Notice we already have the help-guix mailing list (which admittedly does not
serve the same purpose). Usually I mix them up anyway, since they appear in
the same mailbox for me...

Andreas

Re: Separate Mailing Lists for Patches vs General Dev Discussion?

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hello!

Florian Paul Schmidt <mista.tapas@gmx.net> skribis:

> I'm following the Guix-Project, even if not contributing much because
> of time constraints. The one, very simple to implement, thing that
> would make following the project more easy IMHO would be a separate
> list for patches. Or maybe the other way around: A separate list for
> more general discussion :)
>
> What do you think?

GCC has a gcc-patches@ mailing list in addition to gcc@.  However, as a
passerby, I found it’s not super clear whether to use gcc@, or
gcc-patches@, or the Bugzilla instance.  So I’m not sure it would
improve the situation.

Thoughts?

FWIW, I filter help-guix, guix-devel, and guix-sysadmin in separate
folders, and then I use Gnus’ scoring mechanism for things in guix-devel
(you could assign a low score to messages whose subject contains
“[PATCH]” for instance.)

Ludo’.

Re: Separate Mailing Lists for Patches vs General Dev Discussion?

[Vincent Legoll]

I'm not sure a separate additional ML would enhance the situation,
the combined volume is low enough to let them stay together.

But resurrection & real use of patchwork (or any other consensus
web tracker) would be a plus for at least some of us newcomers
from different horizons.

I can understand the repulsion against some of them, but a PR-like
enabled one could ease the on-boarding of new contributors. So if
it's acceptable to committers, why not try to use one a bit more
regularly ?

-- 
Vincent Legoll

Re: Separate Mailing Lists for Patches vs General Dev Discussion?

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi,

Vincent Legoll <vincent.legoll@gmail.com> skribis:

> But resurrection & real use of patchwork (or any other consensus
> web tracker) would be a plus for at least some of us newcomers
> from different horizons.

The instance at <http://patchwork.sourceware.org/project/guix/list/> is
not widely used, it seems.  Part of the problem is that it often does
not automatically detect whether a patch has already been committed
(requiring manual intervention), and does not recognize patch series and
revisions.

Newer versions of Patchwork fix the latter, as can be seen at
<http://patchwork.ozlabs.org/project/glibc/list/>.  Not sure about the
former.

Maybe we could register at ozlabs.org to see the difference?

> I can understand the repulsion against some of them, but a PR-like
> enabled one could ease the on-boarding of new contributors. So if
> it's acceptable to committers, why not try to use one a bit more
> regularly ?

Some of us prefer an email-based workflow, though there’s no consensus.
I’ve tried to look for tools that would allow not only email but also a
CLI or Web UI, as you might have seen in the ML archive, but to no
avail.  So, concrete suggestions are welcome.  :-)

Thanks,
Ludo’.

Re: Separate Mailing Lists for Patches vs General Dev Discussion?

[Vincent Legoll]

>> But resurrection & real use of patchwork (or any other consensus
>> web tracker) would be a plus for at least some of us newcomers
>> from different horizons.
>
> The instance at <http://patchwork.sourceware.org/project/guix/list/> is
> not widely used, it seems.

> Part of the problem is that it often does not automatically detect whether
> a patch has already been committed (requiring manual intervention)

Been there done that, but only once, so I'm not burned by it, but I can
imagine this being painful...

There's not silver bullet for this

-- 
Vincent Legoll

Re: Separate Mailing Lists for Patches vs General Dev Discussion?

[Leo Famulari]

On Fri, Jul 29, 2016 at 01:56:36PM +0200, Vincent Legoll wrote:
> There's not silver bullet for this

Some blacksmith should forge one ;)

I think there is a real demand for a good hybrid mailing list / web page
software development interface.

Re: Separate Mailing Lists for Patches vs General Dev Discussion?

[Danny Milosavljevic]

Hi,

On Mon, 25 Jul 2016 22:35:57 +0200
Florian Paul Schmidt <mista.tapas@gmx.net> wrote:

> I'm following the Guix-Project, even if not contributing much because of 
> time constraints. The one, very simple to implement, thing that would 
> make following the project more easy IMHO would be a separate list for 
> patches. Or maybe the other way around: A separate list for more general 
> discussion :)
> 
> What do you think?

I think it would be easier if you created a filter rule in your mail user agent that filters out E-Mails that have subjects that start with "[PATCH". No need to seperate mailinglists at the server for that. Also, maybe you will want to look at a patch later, and then you have to subscribe to the other list. There are enough barriers to contribution already. Patches are posted here in order to invite discussion, it's not a commit autobot that posts them or anything. 

Also, at least I post patches as response to non-patch discussions as well - that's important for context. I even post bug reports as response to other posts - also for context. This context would be lost in your scenario.

I don't see why one would subscribe to the devel mailing list if one didn't want to see patches. I mean what would the development consist of? Writing poems? :)

There's a user help list, help-guix. I'm not subscribed to it. Just now I checked help-guix archives and there was a discussion about Guix on ARM I would have been interested in but completely missed. Creating another list would make it worse in my opinion.