Re: search by whole thread?

[Eric Wong <e@80x24.org>]

Jacob Keller <jacob.e.keller@intel.com> wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm wondering if there is a way to search a list by the entire thread?

Not yet...

> For example, I want to find all threads which have at least one message
> with dfn:<some path> and which have no messages containing the text
> "Reviewed-by".
> 
> This would for example let me search an open source archive for threads
> (patch series for example) which have not received any reviewed-by reply.

Yes, that's something I've wanted, too...

> The current search function available through the HTML website doesn't
> seem to have a "by thread" function. I also haven't been able to find
> any option similar to this in the email client I typically use for
> interacting with the lists (Thunderbird).

I think the reason it's rare in MUAs is that it's potentially
very expensive.  But I think the `thread:{subquery}' feature
from notmuch I discussed with Konstantin the other week[1] can
do what you want it to do.

Keep in mind, notmuch-search-terms(7) states:

	The performance of such queries can vary wildly.

And that's for a private client tool for a single user.

For a public-facing web UI, we'll need proper timeouts (likely
via RLIMIT_CPU + SIGXCPU) in an external process and a C++ build
against libxapian.  AFAIK, custom query parsers aren't possible
in Xapian's high-level language bindings; fortunately I can
legally reuse GPL-3+ C++ code from notmuch \o/

The external process will probably be similar to
`git cat-file --batch-command' though it can use SOCK_SEQPACKET
for requests and pipes for large responses.

> Perhaps this is something that I could implement locally from the clone
> of the archive, but I am not quite sure how to go about it.. It seems
> like something that should be reasonably straight forward given the way
> that public inbox already tracks threads. Any suggestions on how to get
> something like this would be appreciated.

Are you able to confirm notmuch `thread:{subquery}' is what
you're after?

I plan on implementing it with proper timeouts for untrusted
clients within the next few weeks/months; assuming some other
stuff works out and I still have Internet + power.


[1] https://public-inbox.org/meta/20230328194549.M808175@dcvr/