Thread: Mailing archive URL stability (was: Re: [HACKERS] Patch review)
Moving to -www On Feb 9, 2008, at 11:27 AM, Tom Lane wrote: > Yeah, it happens that way for me too. The other huge, huge problem > with > it is the lack of stability of URLs for the items in the list, which > makes it difficult to identify which item you're talking about. Wasn't someone going to look into having the mailing list generate a header that would be universally unique and un-changing? -- Decibel!, aka Jim C. Nasby, Database Architect decibel@decibel.org Give your computer some brain candy! www.distributed.net Team #1828
Decibel! wrote: > Moving to -www > > On Feb 9, 2008, at 11:27 AM, Tom Lane wrote: >> Yeah, it happens that way for me too. The other huge, huge problem with >> it is the lack of stability of URLs for the items in the list, which >> makes it difficult to identify which item you're talking about. > > > Wasn't someone going to look into having the mailing list generate a > header that would be universally unique and un-changing? The archive URLs *are* stable. It's the ones in Bruces patch-queue that aren't, and that's because he sometimes deletes mail. In the archives we don't delete, so they stay stable. //Magnus
Magnus Hagander wrote: > Decibel! wrote: >> Moving to -www >> >> On Feb 9, 2008, at 11:27 AM, Tom Lane wrote: >>> Yeah, it happens that way for me too. The other huge, huge problem with >>> it is the lack of stability of URLs for the items in the list, which >>> makes it difficult to identify which item you're talking about. >> >> Wasn't someone going to look into having the mailing list generate a >> header that would be universally unique and un-changing? > > The archive URLs *are* stable. It's the ones in Bruces patch-queue that > aren't, and that's because he sometimes deletes mail. In the archives we > don't delete, so they stay stable. Still, it would be pretty useful to have a facility for searching messages by Message-Id (which are unique and immutable). If the "patch queue" consisted solely of Message-Ids, it would be pretty easy and quick to locate the exact message in the archives. -- Alvaro Herrera http://www.CommandPrompt.com/ PostgreSQL Replication, Consulting, Custom Development, 24x7 support
Alvaro Herrera wrote: > Magnus Hagander wrote: >> Decibel! wrote: >>> Moving to -www >>> >>> On Feb 9, 2008, at 11:27 AM, Tom Lane wrote: >>>> Yeah, it happens that way for me too. The other huge, huge problem with >>>> it is the lack of stability of URLs for the items in the list, which >>>> makes it difficult to identify which item you're talking about. >>> Wasn't someone going to look into having the mailing list generate a >>> header that would be universally unique and un-changing? >> The archive URLs *are* stable. It's the ones in Bruces patch-queue that >> aren't, and that's because he sometimes deletes mail. In the archives we >> don't delete, so they stay stable. > > Still, it would be pretty useful to have a facility for searching > messages by Message-Id (which are unique and immutable). If the "patch > queue" consisted solely of Message-Ids, it would be pretty easy and > quick to locate the exact message in the archives. Oh, I certainly don't argue with that. I know Dave started working on something else, but I don't think he's working on it actively atm. //Magnus
Alvaro Herrera wrote: > Magnus Hagander wrote: > > Decibel! wrote: > >> Moving to -www > >> > >> On Feb 9, 2008, at 11:27 AM, Tom Lane wrote: > >>> Yeah, it happens that way for me too. The other huge, huge problem with > >>> it is the lack of stability of URLs for the items in the list, which > >>> makes it difficult to identify which item you're talking about. > >> > >> Wasn't someone going to look into having the mailing list generate a > >> header that would be universally unique and un-changing? > > > > The archive URLs *are* stable. It's the ones in Bruces patch-queue that > > aren't, and that's because he sometimes deletes mail. In the archives we > > don't delete, so they stay stable. > > Still, it would be pretty useful to have a facility for searching > messages by Message-Id (which are unique and immutable). If the "patch > queue" consisted solely of Message-Ids, it would be pretty easy and > quick to locate the exact message in the archives. If the patch queue was only message-ids it would be pretty hard to understand without clicking on every message. Perhaps someone can add a message-id search link to every email using mhonarc. -- Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> http://momjian.us EnterpriseDB http://postgres.enterprisedb.com + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +
Bruce Momjian wrote: > Alvaro Herrera wrote: > > Still, it would be pretty useful to have a facility for searching > > messages by Message-Id (which are unique and immutable). If the "patch > > queue" consisted solely of Message-Ids, it would be pretty easy and > > quick to locate the exact message in the archives. > > If the patch queue was only message-ids it would be pretty hard to > understand without clicking on every message. Huh, it is relatively hard to understand right now without clicking on every message. I wasn't suggesting that the "Subject" line be lost -- only that on clicking on a subject, you should be taken to the perennial archive, based on Message-Id retrieval, instead of the current status which is to take you to a volatile URL like "msg00023.html" which changes every time you delete an email. > Perhaps someone can add a message-id search link to every email using > mhonarc. That seems rather pointless, unless I misunderstand what you are suggesting. The point is that if I want to talk about an item on the queue, it does no good to take the URL and paste it here, because by the time someone comes and reads my message, the URL will have changed to point to a different message (or nowhere at all); whereas if we had a Message-ID URL for each message, we could just paste that and it would always work. -- Alvaro Herrera http://www.CommandPrompt.com/ PostgreSQL Replication, Consulting, Custom Development, 24x7 support
"Alvaro Herrera" <alvherre@commandprompt.com> writes: > Still, it would be pretty useful to have a facility for searching > messages by Message-Id (which are unique and immutable). If the "patch > queue" consisted solely of Message-Ids, it would be pretty easy and > quick to locate the exact message in the archives. The nice thing about using message-ids would be that we could locate those messages in other storage aside from the archives -- such as our local mail spool. (The down-side is that message-ids are not necessarily unique. In particular it doesn't identify which copy of a message you're referring to when it was sent to addresses. Mailers also sometimes mess up and generate duplicate message-ids. But I don't think either of these issues affect us here though.) -- Gregory Stark EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com Ask me about EnterpriseDB's RemoteDBA services!