TODO items for public-inbox
-(Not in any particular order)
+(Not in any particular order, and
+performance, ease-of-setup, installation, maintainability, etc
+all need to be considered for everything we introduce)
-* mailmap support (same as git) for remapping expired email addresses
+* general performance improvements, but without relying on
+ XS or pre-built modules any more than we currently do.
-* WWW: Hybrid flat view + thread skeleton (requires Xapian)
+* mailmap support (same as git) for remapping expired email addresses
* POP3 server, since some webmail providers support external POP3:
https://public-inbox.org/meta/20160411034104.GA7817@dcvr.yhbt.net/
+ Perhaps make this depend solely the NNTP server and work as a proxy.
+ Meaning users can run this without needing a full copy of the
+ archives in a git repository.
-* TLS support for various daemons (including STARTTLS for NNTP and POP3)
+* HTTP and NNTP proxy support. Allow us to be a frontend for
+ firewalled off (or Tor-exclusive) instances. The use case is
+ for offering a publically accessible IP with a cheap VPS,
+ yet storing large amounts of data on computers without a
+ public IP behind a home Internet connection.
-* Unix socket support for HTTP and POP3 server for use behind reverse
- proxies like nginx
+* optional Cache::FastMmap support so production deployments won't
+ need Varnish (Varnish doesn't protect NNTP, either)
-* Combined "super server" for NNTP/HTTP/POP3 to reduce memory overhead
+* dogfood and take advantage of new kernel APIs (while maintaining
+ portability to older Linux, free BSDs and maybe Hurd).
+
+* dogfood latest Xapian, Perl5, SQLite, git and various modules to
+ ensure things continue working as they should (or more better)
+ while retaining compatibility with old versions.
-* Optional reply-to-list support for mirroring lists that want it :<
- Reply-to-list encourages the existing list as a single-point-of-failure,
- but having an extra mirror using public-inbox.org is nice regardless.
+* Support more of RFC 3977 (NNTP)
+
+* Combined "super server" for NNTP/HTTP/POP3 to reduce memory overhead
* Configurable linkification for per-inbox shorthands:
"$gmane/123456" could be configured to expand to the
likewise "[Bug #123456]" could be configured to expand to
point to some project's bug tracker at http://example.com/bug/123456
+* configurable synonym and spelling support in Xapian
+
* Support optional "HTTPS Everywhere" for mapping old HTTP to HTTPS
links if (and only if) the user wants to use HTTPS. We may also
be able to configure redirects for expired URLs.
the links should point to an anchor tag within the same page,
instead; giving the user options.
-* implement RFC 4685 (Atom message threading)
-
* configurable constants (index limits, search results)
-* use tags as date-based skiplists for navigating history
- (maybe not needed with Xapian support nowadays?)
+* handle messages with multiple Message-IDs (done for v2, doable for v1)
+
+* handle broken double-bracketed References properly (maybe)
+ and totally broken Message-IDs
+
+ cf. https://public-inbox.org/git/20160814012706.GA18784@starla/
+
+* improve documentation
-* handle Xapian date range queries:
- http://mid.gmane.org/20151005222157.GE5880@survex.com
+* linkify thread skeletons better
+ https://public-inbox.org/git/6E3699DEA672430CAEA6DEFEDE6918F4@PhilipOakley/
+
+* streaming Email::MIME replacement: currently we generate many
+ allocations/strings for headers we never look at and slurp
+ entire message bodies into memory.
+ (this is pie-in-the-sky territory...)
* use REQUEST_URI properly for CGI / mod_perl2 compatibility
with Message-IDs which include '%' (done?)
-* more test cases (use git fast-import to speed up creation)
+* more and better test cases (use git fast-import to speed up creation)
+
+* large mbox/Maildir/MH/NNTP spool import (see PublicInbox::Import)
+
+* Read-only WebDAV interface to the git repo so it can be mounted
+ via davfs2 or fusedav to avoid full clones.
+ davfs2 needs Range: request support for this to be feasible:
+ https://savannah.nongnu.org/bugs/?33259
+ https://savannah.nongnu.org/support/?107649
+
+* Contribute something like IMAP IDLE for "git fetch".
+ Inboxes (and any git repos) can be kept up-to-date without
+ relying on polling.
+
+* Improve bundle support in git to make it cheaper to host/clone
+ with dumb HTTP(S) servers.
+
+* Expose targeted reindexing of individual messages.
+ Sometimes an indexing bug only affects a handful of messages,
+ so it's not worth the trouble of doing a full reindex.
+
+* code repository integration (with cgit, gitweb, etc...)
+
+* migration path to v2 without breaking v1 "git fetch" cronjobs
+
+* imperfect scraper importers for obfuscated list archives
+ (e.g. obfuscated Mailman stuff, Google Groups, etc...)
+
+* consider using HTTP::Date instead of Date::Parse, since we need the
+ former is capable of parsing RFC822-ish dates, used by Plack, and
+ the latter is missing from OpenBSD and maybe other distros.
+
+* improve performance and avoid head-of-line blocking on slow storage
+
+* share "git cat-file --batch" processes across inboxes to avoid
+ bumping into /proc/sys/fs/pipe-user-pages-* limits
+
+* make "git cat-file --batch" detect unlinked packfiles so we don't
+ have to restart processes (very long-term)
+
+* support searching based on `git-patch-id --stable` to improve
+ bidirectional mapping of commits <=> emails
+
+* linter to check validity of config file
+
+* linter option and WWW endpoint to graph relationships and flows
+ between inboxes, addresses maildirs, coderepos, etc...
-* large mbox/Maildir/MH/NNTP spool import (use git fast-import)
+* pygments support - via Python script similar to `git cat-file --batch'
+ to avoid startup penalty. pygments.rb (Ruby) can be inspiration, too.