bug_email.pl and bugzilla_append_email.pl

[David Miller]

On 2/14/2004 11:56 AM -0800, Albert Ting wrote:

> Hi, are there any plans to fold these files into the production release?
> If anything, it would seem they should at least be merged into a single
> script and have the code cleaned up.

Yes, there are.  Getting formal inbound email support is on my list for the
March/April time frame (starting to work on it - won't necessarily be done
by then).  It's about time to start discussing it here anyway. :)

I'm not necessarily going to hang onto the existing syntax used by those
scripts, since the scope of what I'm hoping to do is a bit broader than
what's available with those scripts currently.  So I'd be really interested
in hearing what kinds of things various people have added to it and what
type of emails you send to do it, and what people really want out of it.

I'm kind of thinking of I'd like to get some of the functionality of the
email stuff in Debian's bug system (making changes to bugs via email, etc).

Of course, I'd like to offer authentication options in the user
preferences, so individual users can control a) whether the bug system will
accept email claiming to be from them, and if so b) how to tell it's really
them (just trust the From: header, last hop was a specific IP address,
GPG-signed message, etc).

And then there's the ever-present question about how to deal with mail from
people who don't have accounts.  I'm thinking stick their mail in a holding
queue and mail them back a confirmation to ensure the return address is
valid.  If they confirm, then they get an account created and the original
mail is dealt with out of the queue.

A bunch of the stuff on the debbugs feature list for email commands looks
really convenient to the developers, but potentially really convenient to
spammers, too (like being able to email a reporter directly by mailing the
bug with -submitter tacked on the end of the bug address).  We'll need to
discuss if that's feasible or if there's ways we can protect it from abuse.
-- 
Dave Miller      Project Leader, Bugzilla Bug Tracking System
http://www.justdave.net/             http://www.bugzilla.org/