patchwork feature request: support for patch series cover letters?

[Dirk Wallenstein]

On Wed, Jan 05, 2011 at 12:39:13PM +0000, Peter Maydell wrote:
> Hi; I use the patchwork install at
> http://patchwork.ozlabs.org/project/qemu-devel/list/
> mostly for monitoring qemu patches I've sent. It's very handy,
> but I do have a feature request I'd like to propose...
> 
> Most qemu patches get sent to the list as multi-patch sets with
> an initial "[PATCH 00/nn]" "cover letter". Unfortunately patchwork
> doesn't do anything with the cover letter, so it just shows the
> individual sub-patches.
> 
> Would it be possible for patchwork to also handle the 'cover letter'
> email, so that:
>  * there's a single URL you can refer to for the whole patchset
> (which could link to the patch URLs for all its parts)
>  * patchwork recorded the overall rationale for the patchset as
> documented in the cover letter (and discussion on it which was
> sent as a reply to the cover letter)
> ?
> 
> (Perhaps patchsets should be automatically turned into
> patchwork bundles? I'm not sure.)

I thought that maybe that could be generalized into having a
'mail-thread' model that catches all mails that are not in response to
any patch, and links to all patches of that thread.  I think it would be a
real nice feature which would also allow to search for 'Reviewed-By'
tags more reliably.

Bundles could be separate from that.  For example one might to bundle
several threads with different versions of the same patch-set.

-- 
Greetings,
Dirk