Re: RFE: use patchwork to submit a patch

[Laurent Pinchart <laurent.pinchart@ideasonboard.com>]

Hi Konstantin,

On Fri, Oct 11, 2019 at 05:35:53PM -0400, Konstantin Ryabitsev wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 11, 2019 at 09:23:08PM +0000, Eric Wong wrote:
> >> (This is the same reason I generally disagree with Eric Wong about
> >> preserving SMTP as the primary transmission protocol -- I've heard lots of
> >> complaints both from kernel developers and especially from people trying to
> >> contribute to CAF about corporate policies actually making it impossible to
> >> submit patches -- and no, using a different mail server is not a possibility
> >> for them because it can be a firing offense under their IT AUP rules.)
> >
> > I'm not opposed to a webmail interface tailored to kernel hacking
> > which does stuff like checkpatch.pl and get_maintainer.pl before
> > sending (similar to your patchwork proposal and
> > gitgadgetgadget).  That would get around security appliances
> > but SMTP would still be used in the background.
> >
> > Or offer full-blown HTTPS webmail + IMAP + SMTP access like any
> > other webmail provider + checkpatch + get_maintainer helpers.
> 
> Well, this is the bit where I say that it may not be allowed by 
> corporate rules. I see this all the time in CAF/Android world where 
> companies *require* that all email goes through their SMTP server so 
> that it can be properly logged (often for legal reasons). And it is 
> often equally required that any code submissions come from 
> person@corporate.com and not person@free-email-provider.com for 
> License/CLA reasons, so setting up a webmail server is not a solution 
> either.
> 
> This is basically why SMTP sucks in my view -- and it's worthless trying 
> to pick fights with IT departments, because they are told to do so by 
> lawyers. So, I want to take SMTP out of the equation:
> 
> 1. provide a way for someone to submit a patch using a web interface 
>    (but still in a way that From: is their corporate ID)
> 2. use individual git feeds as a way to send out patches instead of 
>    always being secondary to SMTP

If the goal is to work around SMTP-related technical issues, is a web UI
really the best way to go ? Wouldn't it be better to do the same through
a git push ? We could setup a git server that requires authentication,
and implement a push-to-email bridge. The information that would need to
be entered in a web UI could be put in a tag message, and we could have
a CLI to create the tag from a list of questions.

-- 
Regards,

Laurent Pinchart