Date: Mon, 6 Nov 2023 12:24:57 +0100
From: Matthieu Baerts <matttbe@...nel.org>
To: David Wei <dw@...idwei.uk>
Cc: netdev@...r.kernel.org, Jakub Kicinski <kuba@...nel.org>
Subject: Re: [RFC Draft net-next] docs: netdev: add section on using lei to
 manage netdev mail volume

Hi David,

On 05/11/2023 19:50, David Wei wrote:
> As a beginner to netdev I found the volume of mail to be overwhelming. I only
> want to focus on core netdev changes and ignore most driver changes. I found a
> way to do this using lei, filtering the mailing list using lore's query
> language and writing the results into an IMAP server.

I agree that the volume of mail is too high with a variety of subjects.
That's why it is very important to CC the right people (as mentioned by
Patchwork [1] ;) )

[1]
https://patchwork.kernel.org/project/netdevbpf/patch/20231105185014.2523447-1-dw@davidwei.uk/

> This patch is an RFC draft of updating the maintainer-netdev documentation with
> this information in the hope of helping out others in the future.

Note that I'm also using lei to filter emails, e.g. to be notified when
someone sends a patch modifying this maintainer-netdev.rst file! [2]

But I don't think this issue of "busy mailing list" is specific to
netdev. It seems that "lei" is already mentioned in another part of the
doc [3]. Maybe this part can be improved? Or the netdev doc could add a
reference to the existing part?

(Maybe such info should be present elsewhere, e.g. on vger [4] or lore)

[2]
https://lore.kernel.org/netdev/?q=%28dfn%3ADocumentation%2Fnetworking%2Fnetdev-FAQ.rst+OR+dfn%3ADocumentation%2Fprocess%2Fmaintainer-netdev.rst%29+AND+rt%3A1.month.ago..
[3]
https://docs.kernel.org/maintainer/feature-and-driver-maintainers.html#mailing-list-participation
[4] http://vger.kernel.org/vger-lists.html

(Note: regarding the commit message here, each line should be limited to
max 72 chars ideally)

> Signed-off-by: David Wei <dw@...idwei.uk>
> ---
>  Documentation/process/maintainer-netdev.rst | 39 +++++++++++++++++++++
>  1 file changed, 39 insertions(+)
> 
> diff --git a/Documentation/process/maintainer-netdev.rst b/Documentation/process/maintainer-netdev.rst
> index 7feacc20835e..93851783de6f 100644
> --- a/Documentation/process/maintainer-netdev.rst
> +++ b/Documentation/process/maintainer-netdev.rst
> @@ -33,6 +33,45 @@ Aside from subsystems like those mentioned above, all network-related
>  Linux development (i.e. RFC, review, comments, etc.) takes place on
>  netdev.
>  
> +Managing emails
> +~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> +
> +netdev is a busy mailing list with on average over 200 emails received per day,
> +which can be overwhelming to beginners. Rather than subscribing to the entire
> +list, considering using ``lei`` to only subscribe to topics that you are
> +interested in. Konstantin Ryabitsev wrote excellent tutorials on using ``lei``:
> +
> + - https://people.kernel.org/monsieuricon/lore-lei-part-1-getting-started
> + - https://people.kernel.org/monsieuricon/lore-lei-part-2-now-with-imap
> +
> +As a netdev beginner, you may want to filter out driver changes and only focus
> +on core netdev changes. Try using the following query with ``lei q``::
> +
> +  lei q -o ~/Mail/netdev \
> +    -I https://lore.kernel.org/all \
> +    -t '(b:b/net/* AND tc:netdev@...r.kernel.org AND rt:2.week.ago..'

Small optimisations:

- you can remove tc:netdev@...r.kernel.org and modify the '-I' to
restrict to netdev instead of querying 'all': -I
https://lore.kernel.org/netdev/

- In theory, 'dfn:' should help you to match a filename being modified.
But in your case, 'net' is too generic, and I don't think we can specify
"starting with 'net'". You can still omit some results after [5] but the
syntax doesn't look better :)

  dfn:net AND NOT dfn:drivers/net AND NOT dfn:selftests/net AND NOT
dfn:tools/net AND rt:2.week.ago..

[5]
https://lore.kernel.org/netdev/?q=dfn%3Anet+AND+NOT+dfn%3Adrivers%2Fnet+AND+NOT+dfn%3Aselftests%2Fnet+AND+NOT+dfn%3Atools%2Fnet+AND+rt%3A2.week.ago..

> +This query will only match threads containing messages with patches that modify
> +files in ``net/*``. For more information on the query language, see:
> +
> +  https://lore.kernel.org/linux-btrfs/_/text/help/

(if this is specific to 'netdev', best to use '/netdev/', not
'/linux-btrfs/')

> +By default ``lei`` will output to a Maildir, but it also supports Mbox and IMAP
> +by adding a prefix to the output directory ``-o``. For a list of supported
> +formats and prefix strings, see:
> +
> +  https://www.mankier.com/1/lei-q

Maybe safer to point to the official doc?

https://public-inbox.org/lei-q.html

(or 'man lei-q')

> +If you would like to use IMAP, Konstantin’s blog is slightly outdated and you
> +no longer need to use here strings i.e. ``<<<`` or ``<<EOF``.

I think we can still use them. In the part 1, they are not used. Maybe
best to contact Konstantin to update his blog post instead of mentioning
in the doc that the blog post is outdated?

> You can simply
> +point lei at an IMAP server e.g. ``imaps://imap.gmail.com``::

In Konstantin's blog post, he mentioned different servers with different
specificities. Maybe easier to just point to that instead of taking one
example without more explanations?

Cheers,
Matt

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