#154 Make the mailing list -> PR comment syncing bidirectional

[Anonymous]

Originally created by: dscho

This will be a very, very tricky thing to implement, with a very real possibility of frequent failures.

We recently saw a couple contributors reply directly in the PR to mails that had been mirrored from the Git mailing list (as PR comments). This does not currently work because the good people on the Git mailing list do not pay attention to GitGitGadget PRs.

To help that, try to figure out which mail to reply to, and send the comment (editing the comment to include a note that it was sent with a link to the mailing list archive).

To figure out what mail to reply to, in the first run, we should look for a quoted link to the mailing list archive (which includes the Message-ID): every PR comment that was mirrored from a corresponding mail on the Git mailing list starts with a link "On the Git mailing list" with a URL to the archive at https://public-inbox.org/git/.

If there is no such quoted link, we could see whether the comment to send contains some quoted text, and if it does not, bail out by adding another comment stating that GitGitGadget could not figure out what mail this reply was for, and please do include the quoted link at the beginning if you want it to be mirrored.

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: dscho

See also the thread at https://public-inbox.org/git/20191120142240.pc5kfpj4eflu7dub@yadavpratyush.com/t/#m1bdeef83a936ef244dd1daaef21d34e5bf3b03b4

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: gitster

https://github.com/git/git/pull/775 is another example that the contributor found it more convenient to reply in the webform. The comment by the contributor quotes "On the Git mailing list" (which points to a specific article in the lore archive in the entry added by GGG) but the message-id seems to be redacted---does GGG see the original message-id of the message, or does it only see the redacted form? The solution outlined by the original issue may not work in this case.

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: dscho

Indeed. Even if it might be possible sometimes to figure out which comment/mail to respond to, in general it won't (e.g. when not quoting anything at all).

In that case, we probably need GitGitGadget to respond with some guidance ("please keep the link to the original mail in the quoted part").

That all sounds quite involved, which is why I did not dare trying to tackle this ticket so far.

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: webstech

Mumbling out loud. There appear to be two different situations.

1. User replying to a GitHub email
2. user adding a PR comment as a reply to a so-and-so@said.this comment by GGG.

In both cases, GGG will now need to process all PR comments. Not suggesting changes to relieve the poster of reposting/mailing.
1. If it is easily determined this is an email reply (it probably is), a reminder comment can be posted. May still need to verify a /submit was done.
2. For this case, there is a need to avoid pre-submit comments. Following the comment chain, if they are not all GGG comments up to the last /submit, the non-GGG comment needs a reminder comment. This would be limited to comments by the PR owner.

The suggested change is not to 'fix' things but simply remind someone they may not have notified everyone they think they were.

Is this enough? To put it another way, is this enough for now until we decide the original suggestions about sending emails are needed in the future?

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: dscho

Hmm. This would certainly side-step the technical difficulties, but could get pretty annoying pretty quickly, I think: I sometimes post on PRs because it's much more convenient for me. OTOH we could exclude me (and gitgitgadget) from that.