[TECH TOPIC] Doing more with lore and b4

[TECH TOPIC] Doing more with lore and b4

[Konstantin Ryabitsev]

While lore.kernel.org is a fairly new service, it has quickly become an
indispensable workflow part for many maintainers. Tools like b4 allow to
automate many aspects of maintainer duties:

- retrieving entire patch series
- tallying up and applying review trailers from thread follow-ups
- diffing re-rolled series against previous versions
- sending templated thank-you notes for applied series and merged pull
  requests
- cryptographically verifying patches for attestation purposes (using DKIM,
  PGP, and more)

This talk will review some of the above functionality that may be already
familiar to maintainers, but will also go through other features of
public-inbox, and peek into what is coming in newer releases, such as:

- how to mirror lore.kernel.org locally (in part or in full)
- how to integrate public-inbox sources into your automated tools
- how to use anonymous imap service for reading mail without subscribing
- how to use local-email-interface (lei) command to create saved searches and
  get pre-filtered threads from multiple local and remote sources into your
  inbox

Working with patches sent via email does not need to be frustrating or
insecure. We are aiming to provide a set of tools to further streamline this
process -- your feedback and suggestions are extremely useful and help
prioritize our efforts.

-K