patchwork feature request: support for patch series cover letters?

[Dirk Wallenstein]

On Fri, Jan 07, 2011 at 12:02:27PM +0100, Dirk Wallenstein wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 07, 2011 at 06:43:58PM +0800, Jeremy Kerr wrote:
> > Hi Peter,
> > 
> > > 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.)
> > 
> > Yeah, this is something I'd like to do too. I see bundles as user-created, so 
> > would prefer some other system of grouping.
> > 
> > I've previously thought this could be solved by adding 'relations' between 
> > patches, that can be used to express all sorts of stuff, like:
> > 
> >  * patch X replaces patch Y,
> >  * patch X is a add-on to patch Y, or
> >  * patch X is in the same series as patch y
> > 
> > However, the patch-cover-letter case might break the last case (and isn't 
> > really the best way to express grouping).
> > 
> > So how does this sound (just taking some initial notes here):
> > 
> > Add patch 'groups', which have:
> > 
> >   * A group leader - the cover letter, or the first patch in the series if
> >       there is none.
> > 
> >   * Member patches
> > 
> > Some bits to consider:
> > 
> > Parsing: currently, if a mail does not contain a patch, we see if it's a 
> > follow up to an existing patch, and discard it if not. This probably won't 
> > work for cover letters, as it's likely that we haven't parsed any patches from 
> > the series yet. For the cover letters, we'd need to keep a record of 
> > 'potential' cover letters, and try and match it up with patches that come in 
> > later.
> 
> Would it be a problem/overkill to record every mail thread? For example,
> a user notifies about a bug and then there are several patches attached
> to the thread. It would be nice to have a grouping for those, too.

Hm, to add a second cent to that first one, maybe there are two
different aspects where automatic grouping would be useful.  One would
be to have patch series that can be downloaded and applied without
somebody explicitly bundling them, as outlined above in 'Parsing:'.  I
was initially more thinking about browsing, finding tags, and grouping
different versions of the same patch.  Maybe they can be coalesced by
means of the mentioned 'relations' (manually).

-- 
Greetings,
Dirk