4 ms·

This is fairly sad, because a lot of software is still maintained using mailing lists. Often not because it's the best solution, but because it's the least bad

by drej 9y ago

This is fairly sad, because a lot of software is still maintained using mailing lists. Often not because it's the best solution, but because it's the least bad (for some). Also, if one wants to ensure that the whole lineage will be with us 20 years from now, a mailing list is a better bet than all the Gerrits and Githubs of the world. I remember I wanted to check out what was happening in Postgres, since it's my favourite database. But the sheer complexity of getting to the code diffs and comments and all that... I quickly gave up, because the environment was rather unfriendly to newcomers (actually, I didn't completely give up, I just browsed the Github mirror, which was the only usable part of their version control). And I'm not blaming them, it works well for the core devs, but they can't expect many new contributors (and contributions are even things like documentation, tests etc.!). Which is a pity.

williamdclt 9y ago
I'd argue that if one wants to ensure that the whole lineage will be with us 20 years from now, the first step is to make sure that the software is still alive 20 years from now. And using a mailing list is a good way of starving your project to death, if you're not Git or Linux or Postgres. And I'm even worried about those... what will happen in a few years/decades from now, when the generation of devs that are using mailing lists is not active anymore?
u801e 9y ago
> Also, if one wants to ensure that the whole lineage will be with us 20 years from now, a mailing list is a better bet than all the Gerrits and Githubs of the world. Unfortunately, email lists are not easy to browse if you're not subscribed and browsing past messages from before you described isn't that easy. The easiest way I've found around that problem is to use an email to NNTP gateway like gmane. Though that makes me wonder why project discussion isn't managed via a newsgroup as opposed to an email list.
- anarazel 9y ago
  Postgres' archives aren't that bad. You can find things via $search_engine, view by time, thread view crosses months etc: https://www.postgresql.org/list/pgsql-hackers/ https://www.postgresql.org/list/pgsql-hackers/
  - u801e 9y ago
    It apparently doesn't present a threaded view like a mail/news client would and downloading the mbox file requires one to authenticate with the server.
    - anarazel 9y ago
      > It apparently doesn't present a threaded view like a mail/news client would Not the same as a mail client, but once you opened an individual email there's threaded structure. > and downloading the mbox file requires one to authenticate with the server. It does, but also says “Please authenticate with user archives and password antispam” - it's just to make automated extraction of email addresses a bit more work.
      - u801e 9y ago
        > Not the same as a mail client, but once you opened an individual email there's threaded structure. Yes, but it's much more cumbersome to navigate the thread compared to using an actual mail client. If web pages of mail archives could present an overview pane for navigating messages, it would go a long way to making them usable in a browser as opposed to just posting links to the immediate parent and the set of children for a given message. Though I wish that having a NNTP gateway (or using NNTP as a primary method of communication for a project) was the standard as opposed to using a mailing list since it would make viewing past messages before subscribing to a newsgroup trivial.
        anarazel 9y ago
        > Yes, but it's much more cumbersome to navigate the thread compared to using an actual mail client. If web pages of mail archives could present an overview pane for navigating messages, it would go a long way to making them usable in a browser as opposed to just posting links to the immediate parent and the set of children for a given message. It does, although discovery of the feature as well as the feature itself could use some improvement. In the header there's "Thread:" and the associated button displays the structure. You can also open a whole thread, but I don't find that particularly useful. The download mbox link inside a message will give you the whole thread as well.
anarazel 9y ago
> (actually, I didn't completely give up, I just browsed the Github mirror, which was the only usable part of their version control). What makes our git own git repo unusable? https://git.postgresql.org/gitweb/?p=postgresql.git; https://git.postgresql.org/gitweb/?p=postgresql.git; I personally find that quicker to get around in than github.
- kazinator 9y ago
  Man, why doesn't gitweb serve up the clone links as links that you can right click and copy? You have to swipe the cursor over "https://git.postgresql.org/git/postgresql.git" https://git.postgresql.org/git/postgresql.git" and copy; how lame. CGIT is so much nicer. It also serves up tarballs out of tags. If you do a "git tag foo-123" and push it out, then on your CGIT interface, there will be a foo-123.tar.gz URL for download (as well as .bz2 and .zip), pulled right out of the repo. Still, either is light years ahead of github's presentation of repos. > What makes our git own git repo unusable? I know; WTF? From grandparent's comment I got the impression that Postgresql must be using CVS, or just tarballs in a FTP directory or something (and that someone kindly made a git repo and put it into GH).

by drej 9y ago

williamdclt 9y ago

I'd argue that if one wants to ensure that the whole lineage will be with us 20 years from now, the first step is to make sure that the software is still alive 20 years from now. And using a mailing list is a good way of starving your project to death, if you're not Git or Linux or Postgres. And I'm even worried about those... what will happen in a few years/decades from now, when the generation of devs that are using mailing lists is not active anymore?

u801e 9y ago

> Also, if one wants to ensure that the whole lineage will be with us 20 years from now, a mailing list is a better bet than all the Gerrits and Githubs of the world. Unfortunately, email lists are not easy to browse if you're not subscribed and browsing past messages from before you described isn't that easy. The easiest way I've found around that problem is to use an email to NNTP gateway like gmane. Though that makes me wonder why project discussion isn't managed via a newsgroup as opposed to an email list.

anarazel 9y ago
Postgres' archives aren't that bad. You can find things via $search_engine, view by time, thread view crosses months etc: https://www.postgresql.org/list/pgsql-hackers/ https://www.postgresql.org/list/pgsql-hackers/
- u801e 9y ago
  It apparently doesn't present a threaded view like a mail/news client would and downloading the mbox file requires one to authenticate with the server.
  - anarazel 9y ago
    > It apparently doesn't present a threaded view like a mail/news client would Not the same as a mail client, but once you opened an individual email there's threaded structure. > and downloading the mbox file requires one to authenticate with the server. It does, but also says “Please authenticate with user archives and password antispam” - it's just to make automated extraction of email addresses a bit more work.
    - u801e 9y ago
      > Not the same as a mail client, but once you opened an individual email there's threaded structure. Yes, but it's much more cumbersome to navigate the thread compared to using an actual mail client. If web pages of mail archives could present an overview pane for navigating messages, it would go a long way to making them usable in a browser as opposed to just posting links to the immediate parent and the set of children for a given message. Though I wish that having a NNTP gateway (or using NNTP as a primary method of communication for a project) was the standard as opposed to using a mailing list since it would make viewing past messages before subscribing to a newsgroup trivial.
      - anarazel 9y ago
        > Yes, but it's much more cumbersome to navigate the thread compared to using an actual mail client. If web pages of mail archives could present an overview pane for navigating messages, it would go a long way to making them usable in a browser as opposed to just posting links to the immediate parent and the set of children for a given message. It does, although discovery of the feature as well as the feature itself could use some improvement. In the header there's "Thread:" and the associated button displays the structure. You can also open a whole thread, but I don't find that particularly useful. The download mbox link inside a message will give you the whole thread as well.

anarazel 9y ago

> (actually, I didn't completely give up, I just browsed the Github mirror, which was the only usable part of their version control). What makes our git own git repo unusable? https://git.postgresql.org/gitweb/?p=postgresql.git; https://git.postgresql.org/gitweb/?p=postgresql.git; I personally find that quicker to get around in than github.

kazinator 9y ago
Man, why doesn't gitweb serve up the clone links as links that you can right click and copy? You have to swipe the cursor over "https://git.postgresql.org/git/postgresql.git" https://git.postgresql.org/git/postgresql.git" and copy; how lame. CGIT is so much nicer. It also serves up tarballs out of tags. If you do a "git tag foo-123" and push it out, then on your CGIT interface, there will be a foo-123.tar.gz URL for download (as well as .bz2 and .zip), pulled right out of the repo. Still, either is light years ahead of github's presentation of repos. > What makes our git own git repo unusable? I know; WTF? From grandparent's comment I got the impression that Postgresql must be using CVS, or just tarballs in a FTP directory or something (and that someone kindly made a git repo and put it into GH).