How to deal with tickets on trac with lots of subscribers and lots of trivial additions?

[Mojca Miklavec]

On Wed, Jul 15, 2015 at 6:04 PM, Mihai Moldovan wrote:
> On 15.07.2015 05:40 PM, Mojca Miklavec wrote:
>> I'm still optimistic that someone will point out some useful trac
>> plugin to fix the "issue".
>
> Trac plugins need to be installed by the MacOS Forge Admins...

Yes, but let's forget about the administrative problems and delays and
concentrate on solutions instead. Even if we would have to wait, it
doesn't mean it couldn't be done (if some solution exists).

>> After some more thought: in what way is sending an email to every
>> single subscriber of macports-dev (where people cannot even
>> unsubscribe and where every maintainer is supposed to be subscribed)
>> considered "less spam" than sending an email to every maintainer of an
>> affected port (where people can actually unsubscribe easily)?
>
> I'm assuming most people have set up filters to move mailing list posts to a
> subdirectory instead the global inbox.

I'm not most people, but I don't for example. (I have a separate email
account just for "mailing lists", but all MacPorts-related email flies
there with exactly the same priority.)

> In any case, these mails do not target
> them directly (own address in CC or To), so it's clear that they don't need to
> care about it and can choose to ignore mails.

That doesn't really apply to me either.

Because username at macports.org is not a real email address, only a
forwarding alias, I wasn't able to convince the gui to treat the
emails sent there to be treated as "personal email". So it's basically
the same again.

> I keep trac mails delivered to my inbox, because I regard them as "high priority".

Which doesn't mean that others do the same.

>>> If they don't, I'll have to infer changes from the svn log/trac timeline, but
>>> there's no guarantee I'll catch everything.
>>
>> This is about one particular ticket where you volunteered to do the
>> work (but even then I would ask developers to mail just to you, not to
>> the whole mailing list).
>
> I'm not perfect either and might miss something, so a backup is appreciated.

You have the "backup" in commit logs ;)

>> But we have a "wider problem". I didn't ask
>> this question just for the sake of a single ticket.
>
> Yeah, I know... we've been talking about situations like these on IRC when
> discussing the libjpeg-turbo switch (which stalled, but will eventually need to
> be carried out, too.)
>
> Updating a comment and some other form of communication outside of trac was
> deemed a good compromise by larry and me. Maybe replying to a thread on the
> mailing list is not a good idea, but this is somewhat of an experiment anyway.

I certainly consider it more problematic to post trivial ticket
updates to macports-dev than to do actual "replies" to the ticket
where anyone can unsubscribe.

> Note that none of us (not even portmgr) can administrate the trac instance.

I know. But if we find an useful tool, there's always a chance that
one of use will convince one of the admins ...

Mojca