Email subject line formatting

[David Holmes]

Hi Jon,

On 9/04/2020 1:48 pm, Jonathan Gibbons wrote:
> I'm not sure I quite understand the example, because normally I would 
> expect to see a bug number after the RFR:.  In this case, seems to be 
> part of the synopsis of the bug, and not the bug number itself.
> 
> That being said, IMO, the important part of the message, for email 
> management, is the bug number. If the change is being integrated, it is 
> not part of the "discussion" of the review and so does not warrant the 
> RFR token at all.  In other words, "Integrated" should replace the RFR 
> token.
> 
> By analogy, look at the process for OpenJDK voting.   There's a "CFV:" 
> message; people respond with "Re: CFV", and the result of the vote 
> starts with "Result", and does not contain the CFV.  That helps firmly 
> indicate that the thread is closed.

To add further to the discussion this is what Erik wrote on a slack chat 
about this:

Skara features two kinds of "changeset notification" emails. The first 
is the "classical" one that is fully backwards compatible with the 
"changeset notifications" you are used to see today. An example of this 
format is:

https://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/skara-dev/2020-February/001796.html

The other kind of "changeset notification" that Skara supports is a 
reply to the original "RFR" thread. This kind of notification has the 
advantage that you can quickly scan the mailing lists and from just the 
subjects see which "RFR" threads that have been integrated. (edited)
See for example the skara-dev mailing list for February:

https://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/skara-dev/2020-February/thread.html

(remember that mailman drops the "Re: " part of the subject) (edited)

The panama team chose to only go with the second kind of changeset 
notifications - the replies to "RFR" threads. They felt that having both 
kind of notifications was a bit too much and they preferred this second 
kind of changeset notification emails.

---

Cheers,
David
-----

> -- Jon
> 
> 
> On 4/6/20 4:21 PM, David Holmes wrote:
>> Hi everyone,
>>
>> Erik asked me to raise this here to see if anyone else is bothered by 
>> this ...
>>
>> When an integration email is sent the subject line of the RFR thread 
>> is augmented with [integrated] and also adorned with "Re:" as if a 
>> reply to the RFR thread e.g.
>>
>> Re: [Integrated] [foreign-abi] RFR: Revert "JDK-8242127: reorganize 
>> ABI-dependent layout constants"
>>
>> My objection to this is that once the subject has been augmented with 
>> [Integrated] it is not appropriate to treat that as a "reply" and use 
>> the "Re:". If I see:
>>
>> [Integrated] [foreign-abi] RFR: Revert "JDK-8242127: reorganize 
>> ABI-dependent layout constants"
>>
>> I know its a changeset notification email and I can ignore it. Just as 
>> I can ignore:
>>
>> git: openjdk/panama-foreign: foreign-jextract: 2 new changesets
>>
>> or
>>
>> hg: jdk/jdk: 8242217: Shenandoah: Enable GC mode to be 
>> diagnostic/experimental and have a name
>>
>> but when I see the "Re:" I think "oh someone is commenting on that 
>> push, there must be an issue and I should read the email" - which is 
>> the case with current hg notification emails!
>>
>> This would be less of an issue if the sender of the integration email 
>> was a bot account but it isn't, it is the committer.
>>
>> So I'd like to suggest that the "Re:" be dropped from the subject line 
>> of these automatically generated integration emails.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> David