[PATCH] models: Don't munge the 'From' field of patches

[Jeremy Kerr]

Hi Doug,

> I can put it on my list of things and try to get to it over the next
> few weeks.  If we can come up with a simple solution then it will be
> easier to find time.  ;)
> 
> 
> So I think that the two "simple" solutions I can think of are one of these two:
> 
> 1. Just add a "From" field in the Web UI in the case that the
> "Submitter" and "From" are different.  That would also match the code
> I already wrote.
> 
> 2. Assign a unique submitter ID every time an email comes in with a
> different Real Name (but the same email address).  You could auto-lump
> these into someone's account if they've logged in to patchwork.
> 
> Basically there are lots of places in the UI (the filter UI, search
> results view, etc) that assume that a single submitter ID matches to a
> single real name, so showing anything other than the official
> "Submitter" name as the Submitter seems wrong.

Been thinking about this a little, and this is what I think would be best:

When a patch or comment comes in, we still lookup a submitter id by
case-insensitive search on the email address field. This sets the
submitter FK on the Patch/Comment object.

However, the web view and mbox downloads use the actual From: header as
the display & download. We could either extract this from Patch.headers
in the view function (check out the usage of HeaderParser in
patch_to_mbox), or save the full From: value as an additional field in
the Patch object. Comments can continue to use Person.name.

List views should still use the Person object to show the submitter, and
we still use the person FK in filter-by-submitter.

However, we should keep the Person.name field current, so that the list
views reflect reality. When a mail comes in, we should update
Person.name to what's in the From field, provided it's non-empty (and
doesn't already match, to avoid an extra DB write). This way, patchwork
doesn't persist with the first mail's From header.

How does that sound?

Cheers,


Jeremy