Re: Thanks for the nmbug-status program

Re: Thanks for the nmbug-status program

[W. Trevor King]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1066 bytes --]

On Tue, Apr 22, 2014 at 02:12:30PM -0700, Carl Worth wrote:
> The script is quite general, (only a tiny portion was tied directly
> to nmbug), so I renamed it notmuch-to-html, and hosted it here after
> a tiny bit of generalization and a couple of minor user-interface
> changes:
> 
> 	http://git.cworth.org/git/notmuch-to-html

Is there a clonable URL for this?

I think that making nmbug and nmbug-status generally applicable for
other projects is a good target.  I don't see any need to pull them
out into a stand-alone project to do that though.  Folks can just
install them alongside notmuch when they install notmuch.  I have a
hard time imagining folks using them *without* installing notmuch.  I
have no preference on whether they should be packaged separately or
together with the notmuch core (Gentoo has an optional nmbug USE flag
to toggle it's installation).

Cheers,
Trevor

-- 
This email may be signed or encrypted with GnuPG (http://www.gnupg.org).
For more information, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy

[-- Attachment #2: OpenPGP digital signature --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 836 bytes --]

Re: Thanks for the nmbug-status program

[W. Trevor King]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 726 bytes --]

On Tue, Apr 22, 2014 at 04:01:06PM -0700, Carl Worth wrote:
> "W. Trevor King" <wking@tremily.us> writes:
> >> 	http://git.cworth.org/git/notmuch-to-html
> >
> > Is there a clonable URL for this?
> 
> Yes. Sorry I didn't provide that, (and clearly I need to reconfigure my
> git web pages to mention the URL):
> 
> 	git clone http://git.cworth.org/git/notmuch-to-html

  $ git clone http://git.cworth.org/git/notmuch-to-html
  Cloning into 'notmuch-to-html'...
  fatal: repository 'http://git.cworth.org/git/notmuch-to-html/' not found

Cheers,
Trevor

-- 
This email may be signed or encrypted with GnuPG (http://www.gnupg.org).
For more information, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy

[-- Attachment #2: OpenPGP digital signature --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 836 bytes --]

Re: Thanks for the nmbug-status program

[W. Trevor King]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 3122 bytes --]

On Tue, Apr 22, 2014 at 04:01:06PM -0700, Carl Worth wrote:
> W. Trevor King writes:
> > I think that making nmbug and nmbug-status generally applicable for
> > other projects is a good target.  I don't see any need to pull them
> > out into a stand-alone project to do that though.
> 
> For what it's worth, I don't disagree.

Does that mean your patches are aimed upstream at the notmuch
repository?  If so, you should probably mail them to the list for
discussion.  Here are my initial reactions from reading the Git
history:

* bcc677a Add initial notmuch-to-html script

This is a side effect of pulling the script out into it's own repo and
doesn't need to be upstreamed.

* fb9f586 Add explicit license information

Another side effect of pulling the script out, but I like direct
license references.  Someone using the script may not want to track
down a chain of references to figure out what the license is.

* 9b8c173 Add copy of the GNU General Public License

Doesn't need to be upstreamed.

* 7d7ce23 Make the configuration file a required argument.

I liked the "fall back to $NMBGIT's config:status-config.json"
functionality.  I also think it generalizes well to parallel use for
multiple projects.  For example, if I was maintaining a "Mesa Stable
Queue", I'd suggest folks use:

  $ NMBGIT=~/.config/mesa-stable-queue nmbug
  $ NMBGIT=~/.config/mesa-stable-queue nmbug-status

(or their shell's approriate environment variable syntax), and I'd
version the config file in the same repo as the associated tags.  I
don't see the point of keeping the config file somewhere else, when
you'll already need a repository to store the tags.

* d456390 Add a comment describing the program

I like the idea, but I'd prefer a docstring just after the leading
comment.  Then we could reuse the docstring as the description for the
ArgumentParser.

* 336411f Add "notmuch search" to the advertised queries.

Folks can already copy-paste the terms into Emacs etc.  You only need
the 'notmuch search' prefix if you're pasting into a shell, in which
case you'll also want to escape shell-sensitive characters like
parenthesis.  I'm fine without this one.

* 9fd6177 Move the generated date from the top of the page to the footer.

I like this.  Part of me wants nmbug-status to use an actual
templating package (e.g. Jinja) for this sort of thing, but we can put
that off and stick with the hard-coded template as long as we keep
agreeing on the layout ;).

* f55ff7e Drop the --get-query option

I'd like to keep the in-Git config, so I'm -1 here.

* 396869c Add support for a --query option (along with a default configuration)

I don't have an opinion about this one ;).  The default config doesn't
look very useful (especially with it's dummy metadata settings), but
I'd only be using the in-Git-config approach, and I don't mind if
others want something like this.

Cheers,
Trevor

-- 
This email may be signed or encrypted with GnuPG (http://www.gnupg.org).
For more information, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy

[-- Attachment #2: OpenPGP digital signature --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 836 bytes --]

Re: Thanks for the nmbug-status program

[Jani Nikula]

On Wed, 23 Apr 2014, "W. Trevor King" <wking@tremily.us> wrote:
> * f55ff7e Drop the --get-query option
>
> I'd like to keep the in-Git config, so I'm -1 here.

FWIW I added the --get-query option as a convenience for accessing the
queries from a nmbug companion shell script (which isn't in the notmuch
repo though). Without it, one needs to duplicate the code digging the
config from the nmbug repo and parsing the json (which includes the json
"schema"). Doing that basically leads to a python snippet that is a
subset of what nmbug-status already does.

BR,
Jani.

Re: Thanks for the nmbug-status program

[Jani Nikula]

On Wed, 23 Apr 2014, Carl Worth <cworth@cworth.org> wrote:
> Ah, then you've missed something different about my usage. I don't have
> any repository storing tags. My tags exist only in my notmuch
> database. The tool I want here is a simpler one, (think, "allow HTML
> export from HTML"). Heck, what I want could almost be nothing more than:
>
> 	notmuch search --format=html

I tried searching for a json-to-html tool with templates, but all I
could find was [1], [2]. I'd really like to experiment with a simple
standalone tool similar to that. It would be nice if you could use the
json output format, and translate that to html with a given template,
and then combine the snippets into a full web page.

BR,
Jani.

[1] http://json2html.com/
[2] https://github.com/moappi/node-json2html

Re: Thanks for the nmbug-status program

[W. Trevor King]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 4768 bytes --]

On Tue, Apr 22, 2014 at 11:01:09PM -0700, Carl Worth wrote:
> W. Trevor King writes:
> >> > I think that making nmbug and nmbug-status generally applicable
> >> > for other projects is a good target.  I don't see any need to
> >> > pull them out into a stand-alone project to do that though.
> >> 
> >> For what it's worth, I don't disagree.
> >
> > Does that mean your patches are aimed upstream at the notmuch
> > repository?
> 
> I didn't really intend them that way. What I meant was that I'd be
> happy to switch to a script within the notmuch repository if it did
> what I wanted, (which is basically just "create an HTML file from a
> notmuch query").

So, “here's a goal to shoot for, and I'm happy with my fork.  If
someone else wants to land patches like these upstream, I'm also happy
dropping my fork.” ;).  I think it would be easier to just mail your
patches to the list and see what sticks.

> > (or their shell's approriate environment variable syntax), and I'd
> > version the config file in the same repo as the associated tags.  I
> > don't see the point of keeping the config file somewhere else, when
> > you'll already need a repository to store the tags.
>
> Ah, then you've missed something different about my usage. I don't
> have any repository storing tags. My tags exist only in my notmuch
> database.

I had missed that, thanks for clarifying.  I still like the
config-from-repository-branch functionality because nmbug tag
repositories are part of the nmbug-status ecosystem, but I agree that
you shouldn't need a tag repository if you don't want to collaborate
on tag maintenance.

> > * d456390 Add a comment describing the program
> >
> > I like the idea, but I'd prefer a docstring just after the leading
> > comment.  Then we could reuse the docstring as the description for
> > the ArgumentParser.
> 
> Sure. That's better.

Would you like to write that up?

> > * 336411f Add "notmuch search" to the advertised queries.
> >
> > Folks can already copy-paste the terms into Emacs etc.  You only
> > need the 'notmuch search' prefix if you're pasting into a shell,
> > in which case you'll also want to escape shell-sensitive
> > characters like parenthesis.  I'm fine without this one.
> 
> This is more about advertising notmuch to people not familiar with
> it. It's more important for something like "mesa stable queue" than
> it is for the notmuch bug list, of course.

That makes sense, but I'd prefer something like:

  <p>This view is generated from the following
    <a href="http://notmuchmail.org/searching/">Notmuch query</a>:
  </p>
  <p>
    <code>
  view['query-string']
    </code>
  </p>

That name-drops Notmuch without implying that the whole thing is
copy-pastable into a shell.  Neither your queries [1] nor our
nmbug-status queries [2] use parens at the moment, but the current
master's example config does [3].

> > * 396869c Add support for a --query option (along with a default configuration)
> >
> > I don't have an opinion about this one ;).  The default config doesn't
> > look very useful (especially with it's dummy metadata settings), but
> > I'd only be using the in-Git-config approach, and I don't mind if
> > others want something like this.
> 
> This is about making this script self-documenting.
> 
> When I first tried nmbug-status I got just a stack trace[*], not even a
> usage message.

Heh, that should probably be fixed ;).  There's a nice example config
at devel/nmbug/status-config.json, but something that's bound more
tightly to the script itself seems useful.

> Even after running "nmbug-status --help" I wasn't any closer to
> knowing how to run the thing. It wasn't obvious that --config was
> the option I needed to get things to work, (from the stack trace,
> clearly this script wants some git repository somewhere), and even
> if I had know that --config was what I wanted, I had no idea how to
> construct a config file.

I hadn't understood that your built-in config was more of a
teaser/seed for new users, it makes more sense in that light.  I'd
prefer a clearer error message when we can't find a config file (I'm
working up a patch now ;), and documentation for the config file
format in 'nmbug-status --help' (where it's clearly static assistence
for unfamiliar users).

Cheers,
Trevor

[1]: http://cworth.org/~cworth/mesa-stable-queue/
[2]: http://nmbug.tethera.net/status/
[3]: http://git.notmuchmail.org/git/notmuch/blob/40dc79d6ac828bc24ae1ec797aa50e53fc455621:/devel/nmbug/status-config.json#l65

-- 
This email may be signed or encrypted with GnuPG (http://www.gnupg.org).
For more information, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy

[-- Attachment #2: OpenPGP digital signature --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 836 bytes --]