LWN: Comments on "Creating an email archive with public-inbox"

mail-archive.com is a mostly viable alternative

aspiers — Wed, 19 Sep 2018 14:49:26 +0000

I just wrote and published a quick and dirty Python script for converting broken gmane links into public-inbox.org links based on Message-ID:

https://github.com/aspiers/list-utils/blob/master/rescue-...

If you have ideas to improve it, feel free to submit issues, or even better, pull requests.

Creating an email archive with public-inbox

marcH — Sun, 04 Mar 2018 20:37:06 +0000

https://lars.ingebrigtsen.no/2016/07/28/the-end-of-gmane/
> I’m open to ideas here. If somebody else wants to take over the concept, I can FedEx you a disk containing the archive (as an NNTP spool). I’ve written a lot of software for Gmane, but it’s all quite site specific and un-documented. And the web interface was written in, like, 2004, so it’s way way way un-Web 2.0-ey and shiny. You’re probably better off implementing this stuff from scratch.

Yet another proof of concept which turned into a mission-critical product :-(

Can't wait for those self-driving cars ;-)

Creating an email archive with public-inbox

jrn — Sun, 04 Mar 2018 20:24:14 +0000

The Git project (https://public-inbox.org/git/) has been making heavy use of public-inbox links since it was first created. Some nice features:
- URLs contain the message-id, making it easy to migrate to another service if public-inbox goes away
- Easy to download an mbox with a collection of messages, like download.gmane.org provided
- Fast search, both online (https://public-inbox.org/meta/_/text/help/) and using git commands offline
- The web UI includes instructions for replying to a message using various mail clients
- Mirroring (either publicly or locally) is straightforward
- No ads

If someone makes a nice UI like gmane's framed one on top of this foundation then that would be amazing.

Creating an email archive with public-inbox

marcH — Sun, 04 Mar 2018 07:28:14 +0000

> Instead, it is a tool allowing people to follow (and participate in) mailing lists without the hassle of actually subscribing to them.

The main problem with subscribing to a mailing-list is more than just a "hassle": subscribing only gets you *future* messages.

Creating an email archive with public-inbox

darwish — Sat, 03 Mar 2018 06:25:37 +0000

Unfortunately their UI is nothing in comparison to GMane threaded web interface :-(

Why the Linux Foundation decided not to revive GMane instead? Jon mentioned on G+ that they did not want to go that way ...

mail-archive.com is a mostly viable alternative

pabs — Sat, 03 Mar 2018 01:01:44 +0000

BTW, Wikipedia has a list of Message-ID redirectors:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Message-ID

If you know of any more, please add them.

mail-archive.com is a mostly viable alternative

lacos — Fri, 02 Mar 2018 09:35:35 +0000

The original threaded / "framed" webui of GMANE remains irreplaceable, IMO. The second best choice I've found thus far is mail-archive.com. While it lacks the frames of GMANE (i.e. it doesn't provide a separate frame for the threaded subject lines and for the message body of the currently high-lit subject line), it does offer the following:

- threaded display of the discussion (i.e. subject lines) at the bottom of the screen, below the full message
- threads tracked & linked together across month boundaries
- support for Message-ID based URL format: <http://mid.mail-archive.com/151864824792.12702.1556511371...>. Once the lookup completes, the browser is redirected to a mail-archive.com "native" URL, and the user will be placed into the right context within the thread.
- mail-archive.com handles cross-posted messages well
- it's not difficult to subscribe mail-archive.com to another list; it's well documented in their FAQ

Over the years of using GMANE, I had become complacent with its top-notch service and stability, and ended up pasting the GMANE-native URLs everywhere. Those are precisely the links that broke all over the net when Lars pulled the plug; as Jonathan writes. It taught me a good lesson: even though I could now paste URLs everywhere that are "native" to mail-archive.com, I only use the Message-ID-based format. If mail-archive.com ever goes down, those links will remain usable: people can just scavenge the Message-IDs from the links, and search other archives for them.

Another advantage of the msgid-based links is that I can compose them before mail-archive.com actually receives & indexes the message. I can look at the msgid of the email that I just sent with Thunderbird or git-send-email, compose the link and paste it in a bugzilla comment, for example. The link might not work for the next hour or so, but in time it will start working.

Not trying to detract the "public-inbox" project, of course (this is the first time I read about it); just saying that the demise of GMANE hurt a lot and that mail-archive.com has proved a close second. I'm unsure about NNTP (I haven't used NNTP in quite a few years).

Creating an email archive with public-inbox

lamby — Thu, 01 Mar 2018 12:45:37 +0000

Somewhat ironic to read this on "Mailman day"...

Creating an email archive with public-inbox

songmaster — Thu, 01 Mar 2018 05:02:49 +0000

Ditto on the use of Mhonarc. By generating an index as a PHP file I recently created full-text RSS feeds for my lists, so it’s pretty flexible and still seems to work pretty well.

Creating an email archive with public-inbox

xanni — Thu, 01 Mar 2018 00:17:04 +0000

I'm still using mhonarc for my mailing lists, but I think that's not getting a lot of updates these days either.