Re: Showcasing lei at Linux Plumbers

[Konstantin Ryabitsev <konstantin@linuxfoundation.org>]

On Wed, Sep 08, 2021 at 02:49:48PM +0000, Eric Wong wrote:
> > On the other hand, a service that offers full search-based imap/pop3 folders
> > is going to be an easy sell:
> > 
> > - it works with any imap client as a simple extra account
> > - it can be mirrored locally and synced two-ways via mbsync
> 
> POP3 would be significantly easier to support server-side with
> multiple users since it won't need to store per-user keywords.

Okay, then perhaps I should sit on my hands for a bit. I'll showcase lei with
remote searches as a feature preview, but buffer it with the following
statements:

- We're working on making it easy to add search-based inboxes that would allow
  developers to closely match subsystem MAINTAINERS entries. In fact, we can
  probably automate the creation of such feeds by watching the MAINTAINERS
  file and automatically converting F:/X: lines into queries (not so easily
  done for K: and N: lines unless they aren't using actual regex expressions).
 
- Developers will be able to easily access these feeds via multiple ways, e.g:

  - read-only imap folders
  - pseudo mailing list subscriptions
  - nntp groups
  - pop3 mailboxes (coming in the future)

The goal is to solve the following several problems:

- remove content-mangling corporate mail gateways out of the picture
- make it unnecessary for patch submitters to know where they should send the
  patches ("just send them to patches@linux.dev").
- reduce the need for new mailing lists as new subsystems are introduced
  ("just send email to discuss@linux.dev with somekeyword: in the subject")

I think that sounds pretty reasonable and I can get most of it done by EOY.

> > - I can do clever things like suspend "lei up" runs if there was no access to
> >   the folder for over N weeks
> > - we can use FS dedupe features since all messages are going to be
> >   identical after writing them out to maildirs
> 
> I've been thinking of making lei storage accessible as Maildirs
> via FUSE, as well.

That's a pretty cool idea, actually -- would that be readonly or with full
deletes/renames support?

-K