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)
+
+* general performance improvements, but without relying on
+ XS or pre-built modules any more than we currently do.
+ (Optional Inline::C and user-compiled re2c acceptable)
* mailmap support (same as git) for remapping expired email addresses
+* support remapping of expired URLs similar to mailmap
+ (coordinate with git.git with this?)
+
* 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 git repositories.
+
+* HTTP, IMAP and NNTP proxy support. Allow us to be a frontend for
+ firewalled off (or Tor-exclusive) instances. The use case is
+ for offering a publicly accessible IP with a cheap VPS,
+ yet storing large amounts of data on computers without a
+ public IP behind a home Internet connection.
+
+* support HTTP(S) CONNECT proxying to NNTP for users with
+ firewall problems
+
+* DHT (distributed hash table) for mapping Message-IDs to various
+ archive locations to avoid SPOF.
-* TLS support for various daemons (including STARTTLS for NNTP and POP3)
+* optional Cache::FastMmap support so production deployments won't
+ need Varnish (Varnish doesn't protect NNTP nor IMAP, either)
-* Unix socket support for HTTP and POP3 server for use behind reverse
- proxies like nginx
+* dogfood and take advantage of new kernel APIs (while maintaining
+ portability to older Linux, free BSDs and maybe Hurd).
-* Combined "super server" for NNTP/HTTP/POP3 to reduce memory overhead
+* 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 code is nice regardless.
+* Support more of RFC 3977 (NNTP)
+ Is there anything left for read-only support?
+
+* Combined "super server" for NNTP/HTTP/POP3/IMAP to reduce memory,
+ process, and FD overhead
* Configurable linkification for per-inbox shorthands:
"$gmane/123456" could be configured to expand to the
- appropriate link pointing to the gmane.org list archives,
+ appropriate link pointing to the gmane.io list archives,
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
-* handle Xapian date range queries:
- http://mid.gmane.org/20151005222157.GE5880@survex.com
+ cf. https://public-inbox.org/git/20160814012706.GA18784@starla/
-* Consider storing git blob ID in Xapian doc data to avoid ref
- and tree lookups based on Message-Id.
+* improve documentation
-* Allow in-place Xapian updates without clobbering the whole
- index (versioning each doc data entry?) for big archives
+* linkify thread skeletons better
+ https://public-inbox.org/git/6E3699DEA672430CAEA6DEFEDE6918F4@PhilipOakley/
+
+* Further lower mail parser memory usage. We still slurp entire
+ message bodies into memory and incur 2-3x overhead on
+ multipart messages. Inline::C (and maybe gmime) could work.
* 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)
+* better test cases, make faster by reusing more setup
+ code across tests
+
+* large mbox/Maildir/MH/NNTP spool import (in lei, but not
+ for public-facing inboxes)
+
+* MH import support (read-only, at least)
+
+* 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 (cgit: done, TODO: gitweb, etc...)
+
+* migration path to v2 (making it transparent for "git fetch"
+ may not be possible, but "public-inbox-fetch" will handle it)
+
+* imperfect scraper importers for obfuscated list archives
+ (e.g. obfuscated Mailman stuff, Google Groups, etc...)
+
+* improve performance and avoid head-of-line blocking on slow storage
+ (done for most git blob retrievals, Xapian needs work)
+
+* HTTP(S) search API (likely JMAP, but GraphQL could be an option)
+ It should support git-specific prefixes (dfpre:, dfpost:, dfn:, etc)
+ as extensions. If JMAP, it should have HTTP(S) analogues to
+ various IMAP extensions.
+
+* scalability to tens/hundreds of thousands of inboxes
+
+ - inotify-based manifest.js.gz updates
+
+ ...
+
+* lei - see %CMD in lib/PublicInbox/LEI.pm
+ (there's a truckload here..)
+
+* make "git cat-file --batch" detect unlinked packfiles so we don't
+ have to restart processes (very long-term)
+
+* linter to check validity of config file
+
+* linter option and WWW endpoint to graph relationships and flows
+ between inboxes, addresses, Maildirs, coderepos, newsgroups,
+ IMAP mailboxes, etc...
+
+* pygments support - via Python script similar to `git cat-file --batch'
+ to avoid startup penalty. pygments.rb (Ruby) can be inspiration, too.
+
+* highlighting + linkification for "git format-patch --interdiff" output
+
+* highlighting for "git format-patch --range-diff" output
+ (linkification is too expensive, as it requires mirroring)
+
+* support UUCP addresses for legacy archives
+
+* support pipelining as an IMAP/NNTP client for -watch + lei
-* large mbox/Maildir/MH/NNTP spool import (use git fast-import)
+* auto-detect and reload on TLS cert+key changes in daemons