Re: mailing list redirect for bug numbers?

On 2019-Jan-16, Stephen Frost wrote:

> As I recall, we actively discussed doing something similar for -hackers,
> to shorten up the URLs going into commit messages but there was some
> concern over having a mapping from IDs to message-IDs.  I'd have to go
> dig up the thread to remember what the issue was there.

The issue is that people working offline want to be able to figure out
emails in their local mailboxes looking just at the contents of a commit
message.  This is trivial if the URLs contain the message-id, and
impossible if they don't.

With bug numbers, the situation is the same: if, while offline, you have
a commit message carrying a bug number, and an offline mailbox where
pgsql-bugs threads are tagged with the same bug numbers, it's easy to
look up the thread based only on the contents of the commit message.  If
you have to contact a web interface to figure out what the thread is,
that workflow fails.

Based on this, my opinion is that a redirection system that handles
  https://postgr.es/bug/8470
by redirecting to message
  https://postgr.es/m/E1VOpEt-0003nc-4J@wrigleys.postgresql.org
works fine, because I can look up the thread by looking for the bug
number in the subject.  If we do anything more complicated than that
(say a database filled with message-ids based on bug IDs that don't
appear in the message subject), that workflow fails when I'm offline.

-- 
Álvaro Herrera                https://www.2ndQuadrant.com/
PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Remote DBA, Training & Services