Today bugs.debian.org had some problem in receiving mails to nnn@b.d.o
timely. For example, in a discussion I started on #222138, mails reached
b.d.o in a non-causal order, making the bug report difficult to follow
on the web page.

Conversely, reading it downloading the mbox folder and using, for
example, mutt sorting the thread by date or thread is nice and easy to
follow.

I'm thus wondering: is it possible to sort the various "posts" to
nnn@b.d.o as seen on the web by date (or thread, or whatever) as many
MUA do? All the needed information seem to be already there.

Many thanks in advance,
Cheers.

reassign 336971 debbugs
severity 336971 wishlist
retitle 336971 [bugreport.cgi] allow ordering by Date: header as well as time received and/or threading
thanks

The question is whether to sort the messages in the order in which
they were received[1], or sort them according to whatever random date
the client MUAs attach to the message.

On top of that is allowing for threading; currently the BTS completely
ignores References: and In-Reply-To: because it's simpler to do so.


Don Armstrong

1: IE, in the order in which the log file is written.

One change I made when working on mail processing for the BTS lately
is to eliminate sorting of the order of processing messages.  (It was
not sorted primarily by reception time before, that was the third
thing.)  I may change it to sort by reception time, but due to
concurent processing delivery order would not be guaranteed.

What about the thread order implemented by many MUA? It should basically
be a topological sort using as relation the constraints imposed by
Message-Id and In-Reply-To mail headers.

Cheers.