Michael Stapelberg: Replying to Debian BTS messages in notmuch
Previously, my workflow regarding replying to bugreports outside my own
packages was very uncomfortable: I first downloaded the mbox archive from the
BTS, then imported that in claws-mail, hit reply all, remove submit@, add
bugnumber@, then send the email.
Therefore, I decided to hack up a little elisp function to automate this
process for notmuch. It first downloads the message from the BTS, adds it to
the notmuch database, then calls notmuch-mua-reply on the message and fixes the
To: header:
;; Removes submit@bugs.debian.org from the recipients of a reply-all message.
(defun debian-remove-submit (recipients)
(delq nil
(mapcar (lambda (recipient)
(and (not (string-equal (nth 1 recipient) "submit@bugs.debian.org"))
recipient))
recipients)))
(defun debian-add-bugrecipient (recipients bugnumber)
(let* ((bugaddress (concat bugnumber "@bugs.debian.org"))
(addresses (mapcar (lambda (x) (nth 1 x)) recipients))
(exists (member bugaddress addresses)))
(if exists
recipients
(append (list (list (concat "Bug " bugnumber) bugaddress)) recipients))))
;; TODO: msg should be made optional and it should default to the latest message in the bugreport.
;; NB: bugnumber and msg are both strings.
(defun debian-bts-reply (bugnumber msg)
;; Download the message to ~/mail-copy-fs/imported.
(let ((msgpath (format "~/mail-copy-fs/imported/bts_%s_msg_%s.msg" bugnumber msg)))
(let* ((url (format "http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?msg=%s;mbox=yes;bug=%s" msg bugnumber))
(download-buffer (url-retrieve-synchronously url)))
(save-excursion
(set-buffer download-buffer)
(goto-char (point-min)) ; just to be safe
(if (not (string-equal
(buffer-substring (point) (line-end-position))
"HTTP/1.1 200 OK"))
(error "Could not download the message from the Debian BTS"))
;; Delete the HTTP headers and the first "From" line (in order to
;; make this a message, not an mbox).
(re-search-forward "^$" nil 'move)
(forward-char)
(forward-line 1)
(delete-region (point-min) (point))
;; Store the message on disk.
(write-file msgpath)
(kill-buffer)))
;; Import the mail into the notmuch database.
(let ((msgid (with-temp-buffer
(call-process "~/.local/bin/notmuch-import.py" nil t nil (expand-file-name msgpath))
(buffer-string))))
(notmuch-mua-reply (concat "id:" msgid) "Michael Stapelberg <stapelberg@debian.org>" t)
;; Remove submit@bugs.debian.org, add <bugnumber>@bugs.debian.org.
(let* ((to (message-fetch-field "To"))
(recipients (mail-extract-address-components to t))
(recipients (debian-remove-submit recipients))
(recipients (debian-add-bugrecipient recipients bugnumber))
(recipients-str (mapconcat (lambda (x) (concat (nth 0 x) " <" (nth 1 x) ">")) recipients ", ")))
(save-excursion
(message-goto-to)
(message-delete-line)
(insert "To: " recipients-str "\n")))
;; Our modifications don t count as modifications.
(set-buffer-modified-p nil))))
In case you want to get updates, you can find the latest version of this code in my configfiles git repository.
To add a single message to the notmuch database and get its message ID, I have
written this simple python script (using python-notmuch), located in
~/.local/bin/python-import.py:
#!/usr/bin/env python
# vim:ts=4:sw=4:et
import notmuch
import sys
if len(sys.argv) < 2:
print "Syntax: notmuch-import.py <filename>"
sys.exit(0)
db = notmuch.Database(mode=notmuch.Database.MODE.READ_WRITE)
(msg, status) = db.add_message(sys.argv[1])
print msg.get_message_id()
If you have any improvements, I d love to hear about it. If it s useful for
you, enjoy.
I've provided a new patch 
I just received a 
The story: I tend to do proactive replacement of hard drive, to avoid losing too much data or be in hurry when the current one fails. There are two ways to monitor a hard drive:
Alas. The blogosphere has been slammed with discontent.
Count me as one of them.
It s been a long time since the last position (I ve held) of significance in Ubuntu, a LoCo Council Member, which I left with a heavy heart.
I felt, at the time, that Ubuntu, The Community was no longer in control of Ubuntu The Distro .
Technical opinions of Ubuntu community members started to get disregarded (starting with the gawd-awful Yahoo search switch), and it continued to get worse as Canonical stopped becoming a contributor to Ubuntu and started becoming it s sole guiding force.
In comes the mess called Ubuntu One which, for the record, is a wrong name, it s not Ubuntu in any sense, it s not Community driven, it just uses Ubuntu as one of it s platforms.
Trading on Ubuntu s good name started this mess.
Slowly, like the ship of theseus, Canonical started to swap out bit by bit until nothing was left without Canonical assignment.
I always assumed it was so that selling the code for another company to use the code for non-free purpose was the reason. Oh well.
Look at us now: Starting off on an ill-thought out path because others are unwilling to say they just didn t understand the whole problem.
This is a long way of saying:
Ex-Ubuntu ers: You re welcome in Debian. I ve set up #ubuntu-expats on oftc. Please join us. You re welcome there.
Working in Debian has been an absolute dream; it feels like contributing to Ubuntu in the early days.
Come. Have a say. Re-join a Community that isn t just Like us on Facebook .
I still consider myself an Ubuntu Community Member, but I don t think there s any community left.
Mark Shuttleworth recently critized Jonathan Riddell for proposing Xubuntu and others join the Kubuntu community. I thought I could make a few amendments to Mark s writing:
Composite and Swap Getting it Right
Where the author tries to make sure DRI3000 is going to do what we
want now and in the future
DRI3000
The basic 
Next round of 
Many libraries build a 
This is the first freeze in which I'm involved with upload rights. And it turned out to be a quite interesting ride so far, so I thought it would be nice to write about it.
(Looking for those graphs online, I realized that I never properly published them, besides that 
A large majority of our packages are maintained in a VCS repository, with Git being the clear winner now.
Possible goal for Jessie: standardize on a Git workflow, since every team tends to design its own?
Packaging helpers
