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

[Doug Anderson]

Jeremy,


On Thu, Sep 26, 2013 at 2:05 AM, Jeremy Kerr <jk at ozlabs.org> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
>>> In which part of the web UI?  I played with this and the "Headers"
>>> still shows the proper (un-munged) From address.  Certainly the
>>> "Submitter" at the top still shows the official patchwork idea of what
>>> the person's name is but I'm not convinced that's a bad thing.
>>> Overall patchwork has the concept of what the official name of a
>>> submitter in several places (replies, the "Filters" UI, etc).  Having
>>> the UI show a different name than the "From" mail header is not so
>>> different than seeing a "reply" have a different name than the
>>> "Acked-by" like that the reply contains...
>>>
>>> Anyway, I'm happy to give your proposal a shot if you want.  Let me know...
>>
>> Ping. Still an issue: http://patchwork.ozlabs.org/patch/277644/
>
> Sorry, been a bit distracted lately. Doug: do you want to have a go at this?
>
> One thing we'll need to work out is how to process these
> potentially-different names in the lists of patches.

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.

--

Let's work out an example.  Say we have "Jenny Jones" who changed her
name to "Jenny Smith" when she got married.  Her email address didn't
change and was "jenny at example.com" the whole time.  She sent patches
both before and after her name change.  Patchwork has assigned her a
unique submitter ID as 1234.  Jenny has never logged into patchwork.

Right now, patchwork treats all patches from the same email address as
a single Submitter, ignoring the "name" part of the address.  So all
of Jenny's patches are submitter ID 1234 and patchwork thinks her
official name is the first one it saw: "Jenny Jones".  That means that
if you search for patches from Jenny and you open the Filters page,
the popup will contain "Jenny Jones" and not "Jenny Smith", right?
...but searching for "Jenny Jones" will still show patches that showed
up after the name change (so you'll see patches from Jenny Jones and
Jenny Smith)

Now you open one of those patches.  What would you expect it to say?
Should it say that the Submitter is "Jenny Jones" or "Jenny Smith"?
Right now it will say "Jenny Jones".  If it showed "Jenny Smith" it
would be confusing since it doesn't match the Filter you searched for.

--

So IMHO either a submitter ID maps to single Real Name (and we add the
"From" field to the UI) or start creating more unique submitter IDs.


Let me know what you think.  I think that creating more unique
submitter IDs might be beyond what I have time for, but I think it
might be a better long term solution.


-Doug