Subject: Opinion poll: Sending an automated email to a thread when it gets added to the commitfest

From: Jelte Fennema-Nio <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2024 00:40:29 +0200

I'd like to send an automatic mail to a thread whenever it gets added
to a commitfest. Since this would impact everyone that's subscribed to
the mailinglist I'd like some feedback on this. This mail would
include:

1. A very short blurb like: "This thread was added to the commitfest
with ID 1234"
2. A link to the commitfest entry
3. A link to the cfbot CI runs
4. A link to the diff on GitHub
5. Any other suggestions?

The main reason I'm proposing this is that currently it's not trivial
to go from an email in my inbox to the commitfest entry. This can be
especially hard to do when the subject of the email is not the same as
the title of the commitfest entry. This then in turn increases the
barrier for people to change the commitfest status, to look at the CI
results, or look at the diff on GitHub. I also had once that I
accidentally added a thread twice to the commitfest, because I forgot
I had already added it a while back.

To be clear, this would **not** be a repeat email. It would be sent
only once per thread, i.e. it is sent when the thread is added to a
commitfest entry. So there won't be a flood of new emails you'll
receive.

Also the github link does not allow comments to be posted to github,
it's read-only. An example being:
https://github.com/postgresql-cfbot/postgresql/compare/cf/5025~1...cf/5025

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From: Tom Lane <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2024 19:19:20 -0400

> 5. Any other suggestions?

+1 for the basic idea.  An awful lot of people send such mails
manually already, so this'd replace that effort in a more predictable
way.  Not sure about your 3 & 4 points though, especially if that'd
mean some delay in sending the mail.  For one thing, wouldn't those
links be stale as soon as the initial patch got replaced?  Those
links seem like they ought to live in the commitfest entry.

			regards, tom lane

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From: Jelte Fennema-Nio <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2024 09:29:43 +0200

On Thu, 15 Aug 2024 at 01:19, Tom Lane <[email-masked]> wrote:
> +1 for the basic idea.

That's great to hear.

>  Not sure about your 3 & 4 points though, especially if that'd
> links be stale as soon as the initial patch got replaced?

I recently made those links predictable based on only the ID of the CF
entry. So they won't get stale, and I would want to send them straight
away (even if that means that they might return a 404 until cfbot
actually pushes the patches to github). The links would be:

https://cirrus-ci.com/github/postgresql-cfbot/postgresql/cf/$CFENTRYID

https://github.com/postgresql-cfbot/postgresql/compare/cf/$CFENTRYID~1...cf/$CFENTRYID

> Those links seem like they ought to live in the commitfest entry.

Agreed. I'll start with that, since that should be very easy.

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From: Peter Eisentraut <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2024 15:28:08 +0200

> 1. A very short blurb like: "This thread was added to the commitfest

How would you attach such an email to a thread?  Where in the thread 
would you attach it?  I'm not quite sure how well that would work.

> to go from an email in my inbox to the commitfest entry.

Maybe there could be a feature in the commitfest app to enter a message 
ID and get the commitfest entries that contain that message.

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From: Nathan Bossart <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2024 09:26:57 -0500

> the mailinglist I'd like some feedback on this. This mail would

I haven't thought too much about the details, but in general, +1 for
sending links to cfest/cfbot entries to the thread.

-- 
nathan

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From: Maciek Sakrejda <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2024 10:22:42 -0700

> 5. Any other suggestions?

I would find (2) very useful.

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From: Jacob Champion <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2024 11:12:16 -0700

> I would find (2) very useful.

Me too.

--Jacob

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From: David Rowley <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 17 Aug 2024 11:36:36 +1200

> 2. A link to the commitfest entry

One thing I have seen which #2 would have helped with was that during
a CF, a patch author posted a trivial patch to -hackers and I
committed it. I didn't know the patch author had added a CF entry to
the *next* CF. I seldom think to look at the next CF page during a CF.
The entry was closed by the patch author in this case.

For that reason, I think #2 would be useful.

> 5. Any other suggestions?

I don't really object, but I think a better aim would be to merge
CFbot with CF so that we could get to those places from the CF entry.

David

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From: Thomas Munro <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 17 Aug 2024 21:44:26 +1200

> CFbot with CF so that we could get to those places from the CF entry.

Ack.  Some progress is happening on that front, working with Jelte and
Magnus off-list...

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From: "Daniel Verite" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 17 Aug 2024 13:59:34 +0200

Jelte Fennema-Nio wrote:

> to a commitfest

Instead of sending a specific mail, what about automatically adding a
mail header like:

  X-CommitFest-Entry: <https://commitfest.postgresql.org/X/Y>

to every outgoing mail whose thread is associated to a CF entry?

It feels more principled and less "in-your-face" than one dedicated
message, plus it would work for all the patches that are already
registered.

On the web archive, the displayer could show it as a clickable link,
along with the main mail headers (from, to, date, Message-ID...), if
 it's deemed important enough to make it prominent.
Otherwise one can click on "Raw Message" to see all headers.

Best regards,
-- 
Daniel Vérité
https://postgresql.verite.pro/
Twitter: @DanielVerite

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From: Thomas Munro <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 27 Aug 2024 13:38:53 +1200

> > CFbot with CF so that we could get to those places from the CF entry.

I've built a system for pushing all the data required to show the
cfbot traffic lights over to the CF app, and shared it with Magnus to
see if he likes it.  If so, hopefully some more progress soon...

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From: Maciek Sakrejda <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 9 Sep 2024 12:40:13 -0700

So, there was limited enthusiasm for a new message here, but I noticed
that current CF messages don't include the CF entry link [1]. What
about adding a link to its existing e-mails?

Thanks,
Maciek

[1]: e.g., https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/172579582925.1126.2395496302629349708.pgcf%40coridan.postgresql.org

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From: Robert Haas <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 9 Sep 2024 16:02:37 -0400

> see if he likes it.  If so, hopefully some more progress soon...

I don't see any traffic lights on commitfest.postgresql.org yet.
Should I #blamemagnus?

-- 
Robert Haas
EDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com

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From: Jelte Fennema-Nio <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Sep 2024 00:52:36 +0200

> Should I #blamemagnus?

Yes. He seems unavailable for whatever reason based on my private holidays
(maybe summer holidays)

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From: Jelte Fennema-Nio <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Sep 2024 00:54:20 +0200

> Yes. He seems unavailable for whatever reason based on my private holidays

*based on my private/off-list communication with him