Email2git: Matching Linux Code with its Mailing List Discussions (Linux.com)

[Posted July 27, 2017 by jake]

Linux.com is carrying an article about email2git by its developer, Alexandre Courouble. Email2git is a way to match up commits and the email thread that discussed them. It currently targets the kernel and threads from the linux-kernel mailing list. There are two separate ways to use it, as an extension to cregit (at https://cregit.linuxsources.org/) that allows browsing changes at the token level or via a search by commit ID interface. "The Linux project's email-based reviewing process is highly effective in filtering open source contributions on their way from mailing list discussions towards Linus Torvalds' Git repository. However, once integrated, it can be difficult to link Git commits back to their review comments in mailing list discussions, especially when considering commits that underwent multiple versions (and hence review rounds), that belong to a multi-patch series, or that were cherry-picked. As an answer to these and other issues, we created email2git, a patch retrieving system built for the Linux kernel. For a given commit, the tool is capable of finding the email patch as well as the email conversation that took place during the review process. We are currently improving the system with support for multi-patch series and cherry-picking." The code for email2git is available on GitHub.

Email2git: Matching Linux Code with its Mailing List Discussions (Linux.com)

Posted Jul 28, 2017 9:42 UTC (Fri) by error27 (subscriber, #8346) [Link]

I think maybe they aren't looking at linux-next commit IDs? It would be kind of nice if I had the Message ID from the original email when I report static checker bugs so that I could respond to the original threads.

Email2git: Matching Linux Code with its Mailing List Discussions (Linux.com)

Posted Jul 29, 2017 23:35 UTC (Sat) by jrn (subscriber, #64214) [Link]

Email2git: Matching Linux Code with its Mailing List Discussions (Linux.com)

Posted Aug 7, 2017 23:17 UTC (Mon) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link]

Why study and learn from the numerous code review systems which already exist when you can stick to email as a database backend?

Probably the main reason git was so successful so fast: it was based on extensive "prior art" research. Granted, another important reason: there was no free and "barely good enough" solution already there (and entrenched).