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From: Stefan Beller <sbeller@google.com>
Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2017 14:01:45 -0700
Message-ID: <CAGZ79kZW6O_wCZRMrWDc1yXvQzTDbFOLrcjt=81XGJj=VUjBzw@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Nonlinear history?
To: Eric Wong <e@80x24.org>, meta@public-inbox.org
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
List-Id: <meta.public-inbox.org>

So I happened to search an old post of mine today,
specifically I knew only a couple of bits of it:
* I authored a patch series, that had a given
  string in the name ("protocolv2")
* I was looking for an answer by Peff

To find the post in question I used both the local git mailing list repository
(as cloned from https://public-inbox.org/git) to find the starting point[1]
as well as the online list to see the relations between posts, such
that I finally arrived at [2].

However in the process of searching locally I wondered if the
repository data could be organized better, instead of linearly.

So what if the git history would reflect the parent relationships
of the emails? Essentially each email is comparable to
a topic branch in the git workflow (potentially with other
series/email on top of it). Each topic would be merged
to master immediately, such that the first parent master
branch history consists of merges only; the second parent
is the new ingested email, which is either a root-commit
(when a new topic is started), or a commit building on top
of another commit (which contains the email it is responding
to; that other commit is merged to master already).

Has this idea been come up before or even discussed before?

Thanks,
Stefan

[1] I really like the search by author feature!
[2] https://public-inbox.org/git/20150604130902.GA12404@peff.net/