Re: mailing list redirect for bug numbers?

On 2019-01-16 18:54:40 -0300, Alvaro Herrera wrote:
> 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.

Well said.