Re: lei-managed pseudo mailing lists

[Konstantin Ryabitsev <konstantin@linuxfoundation.org>]

On Mon, Apr 26, 2021 at 05:37:26PM +0000, Eric Wong wrote:
> > The latter is specifically something I think would be of interest to kernel
> > folks, so I envision that we'd have something like the following:
> > 
> > - a maintainer publishes a configuration file we can pass to lei
> 
> The command-line might be enough, the pathname of the current
> state/config file is a bit tricky and tied to its output.
> I suppose "lei import-search" can be a command, though...

Excellent, excellent. How well does it deal with the situation when the search
parameters change?

> > - our backend lei process uses all of lore.kernel.org sources to create and
> >   continuously update a new public-inbox repository with matching search
> >   results
> 
> There's already some accomodations for that in LeiSavedSearch
> which can present itself as a PublicInbox::Inbox-ish object to
> PublicInbox::WWW (untested).
> 
> Searching an within LSS isn't implemented, yet, but I think it's
> doable w/o extra Xapian storage.
> 
> However, git object storage isn't duplicated, which is nice for
> local use (instaweb-like), but supporting clone/fetch isn't as
> natural...

I'm thinking we need the ability to make it a real clonable repository --
perhaps without its own xapian index? Actual git repositories aren't large,
especially if they are only used for direct git operations. Disk space is
cheap, it's the IO that's expensive. :)

If these are real clonable repositories, then it would be easy for people to
set up replication for just the curated content people want.

> Perhaps supporting a v2 inbox as an lei q output destination
> is in order:
> 
> 	lei q --output v2publicinbox:/path/to/v2 --shared SEARCH_TERMS
> 
> --shared would be "git clone --shared", the new v2 inbox can
> use ~/.cache/lei/all_locals_ever.git/ as an alternate and not
> duplicate space for blobs.

Not really worried about deduping blobs, but I'm wondering how to make it work
well when search parameters change (see above). E.g.:

1. we create the repo with one set of parameters
2. maintainer then broadens it up to include something else
3. maintainer then decides that it's now *way* too much and narrows it down again

We don't really want step 2 to lead to a permanent ballooning of the
repository, so perhaps all query changes should force-append a dt: with the
open-ended datetime of the change? Or do you already have a way to deal with
this situation?

> > - we set up a mlmmj list that doesn't receive any direct mail but is only fed
> >   from saved search results; people can subscribe/unsubscribe as they would
> >   with any other mlmmj list
> > 
> > Any particular reason this wouldn't work?
> 
> Nope :)  As long as all the data formats can interoperate
> (mostly RFC5322/2822).  "lei convert" is nice, too :)

Great! I believe this will help untangle the current situation with "where
should I send this kernel patch". 

I want "just send it to linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org" to be a valid option
again. Participating subsystems can then define what patches they want to see
by setting up pseudo-lists and letting participating reviewers/maintainers
subscribe to them via their preferred mail delivery mechanism.

-K