Re: nndebbugs

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org>]

Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu> writes:

> Yeah, that might be easier than parsing the XML structure of the retured
> SOAP array when you don't have a SOAP library available to use.

I had a peek at the HTML from the Emacs debbugs page:

<li><div class="shortbugstatus">
  <a href="bugreport.cgi?bug=1034">#1034</a>
  [<font face="fixed"><span class="link" onclick="javascript:extra_status_visible(1034)"><abbr title="normal">n</abbr>|&nbsp;&nbsp;|&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></font>]
  [<a class="submitter" href="pkgreport.cgi?package=emacs">emacs</a>, <a class="submitter" href="pkgreport.cgi?package=gnus">gnus</a>]
  <a href="bugreport.cgi?bug=1034">23.0.60; The attached mail crashes Emacs when viewed with Gnus</a>
  <div id="extra_status_1034" class="shortbugstatusextra">
  <span>Reported by: <a href="pkgreport.cgi?submitter=tassilo%40member.fsf.org">Tassilo Horn &lt;tassilo &lt;at&gt; member.fsf.org&gt;</a>;</span>
  <span>Date: Fri, 26 Sep 2008 13:00:03 UTC;</span>
<span>Severity: normal;</span>
<span></span>
<span><strong>Filed 1 year and 364 days ago</strong>;</span>
<span><strong>Modified 282 days ago</strong>;</span>
</div>
</div>

The "Modified X days ago" thing could be used as a hint whether
nndebbugs needs to update anything...

> Didn't you just implement something sort of like that for nnimap?  :)  (I
> realize that it's a bit different and you probably don't want to have to
> enter something explicit to fetch the rest of the article, but it's a
> similar idea.)

Hm...  true...

> I see the primary use of a dedicated backend as a way to go back and work
> on some previous bug, or catch up on a bunch of bug backlog that you
> didn't keep in your mail for some reason, in which case I think I'd want
> to work on one bug at a time.

Yes, that's how I see myself using it, too.  There's old bugs there, and
I just want to read them in a pleasant way.  Most of them will be closed
with a single comment, probably, and if discussion is necessary, I'd
rather do it via the mailing list.

So it's basically more geared towards "let me get at all the open bugs,
and let me interact with them quickly".

So perhaps keeping a article mapping thing going at all isn't necessary?
Just do a totally ephemeral group based on all the mboxes from the
area.  You scan the stuff, you answer and close stuff, but the Gnus and
the backend doesn't keep track of what you've read and what you haven't
read.

That would be extremely simple to implement.  :-)

But that might be just too simplistic.  Even though you wouldn't be
using that as a way to carry on discussions, it's still not nice to read
things more than once...

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
  larsi@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen