Subject: bug#66330: 28.2; Gnus wide reply (S W) changes Subject header when used from Debbugs thread

From: Michael Albinus <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 04 Oct 2023 09:53:02 +0200

Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]> writes:

Hi Eli,

>> When attempting to reply from an Emacs Debbugs thread specific email,
>> the Subject line gets set to the subject of the first email in the
>> thread rather than to that of the specific email I'm replying to, which
>> looses context.
>
> The Subject lines of emails pertaining to a discussion of a bug should
> never be changed.  So I see no problem here, unless I'm missing
> something.
>
> Michael, am I wrong?

Well, we haven't documented such a rule. But based on my experience I
would agree. There's often a message in the [email-masked] ML
with the subject "bug#xxxxx: Patch" or alike, which doesn't help. I'm
too old to remember all the bug numbers and their related topic, and I
read only messages in that ML with topics I'm interested in.

>> 1. M-x debbugs-gnu-bugs 65479
>>
>> 2. Press 'a' to load the bug despite the lack of SSL certificates.
>>
>> 3. Navigate to the message titled:
>> [bug#65479] [PATCH core-updates 02/61] gnu: Add docbook-xml-5.
>>
>> 4. Press S W to send a wide reply.
>>
>> 5. Observe that the Subject header in the email response being edited
>> has been changed to "Re: bug#65479: [PATCH core-updates 00/61] The
>> Draining of the XML & DocBook Swamp.", that is, the original subject of
>> the "bug" (its first message).
>
> This is a bad Subject line to begin with, from where I stand: it
> should not include the patch series numbers, and it should not assume
> there will be additional messages with different series numbers.
>
> The Subject lines in a bug/issue discussion should describe the
> bug/issue, not the patches sent to fix the issue.

D'accord. But I guess the subject line quoted here is created by a tool
of the guix-patches toolchain. So first we shall agree about the rules
of that toolchain (I'm from Emacs, I won't dictate anything!).

If this is an agreed behavior, we could discuss about a debbugs-gnu user
option how to handle the subject line of replies, with a different
default value for guix-patches messages. The global default shouldn't be
changed.

Well, we even have already guix specific code, see debbugs-guix.el. I
would appreciate if somebody from the guix project supports me in
writing such a patch.

Best regards, Michael.