Re: email backend for fedmsg

[clime]

osite? I do some clicking action somewhere
>>> and
>>> > > > it will send an email to a certain mailing list to inform human
>>> > > > beings? Or let's not just clicking but e.g. `git push` (something
>>> that
>>> > > > you can still do from command line).
>>> > > >
>>> > > > Do you have: I do some clicking action somewhere and it will send
>>> an
>>> > > > email to a certain mailing list where the email is afterward
>>> parsed by
>>> > > > another service which will do an action (e.g. launch a build)
>>> based on
>>> > > > it?
>>> > >
>>> > > Both of these are somewhat true.
>>> > >
>>> > > Some examples of email-based behaviors:
>>> > >  - Our bug tracking system is fully controlled by email.
>>> > >  - Closing a bug in reaction to an upload is done by an email from
>>> the archive maintenance system (dak) to the bug tracking system.
>>> > >  - Salsa has a webhook service that react to UI clicks (e.g.
>>> "clicking the merge button") by sending an email to the BTS (e.g. to tag
>>> bugs as pending), or to tracker.d.o (for new commit notifications).
>>> > >  - Some of our IRC bots are triggered by procmail rules.
>>> > >  - At some point mentors.debian.net depended on a NNTP gateway to
>>> the debian-devel-changes mailing list to trigger removal of superseded
>>> packages (...)
>>> > >  - etc. etc.
>>> > >
>>> > > I'm still not sure where your trail of questions is going? fedmsg in
>>> Debian has been dead for years at this point, and there still doesn't seem
>>> to be much interest to implement anything beyond email parsing in some of
>>> our core systems.
>>> >
>>> > Cool, so basically what I am thinking about is to create a free
>>> > software from what you are describing. I.e. create reusable tooling
>>> > out of the Debian messaging system. Something that a new linux
>>> > distribution can easily start using to connect their services.
>>> >
>>> > I didn't know Debian infra works like this but I find it very
>>> > elegant/efficient and I would like the solution you have to be
>>> > reusable by others.
>>> >
>>> > So basically the tooling should contain:
>>> > - unified email message format
>>> > - library that is able to translate a message to a language data
>>> > structure (e.g. dictionary in python)
>>> > - email receiver that would be listening for emails coming from the
>>> > bus and emitting events based on that (this could be part of the
>>> > library so you would be able to attach a callback for an incoming
>>> > message or just do blocking waits)
>>> > - email publisher - something that can send a new message into the
>>> > bus, i.e. to a preconfigured mail server (a "broker" or "hub")
>>> > - mail server that would have an http API to manage topic
>>> > subscriptions  (i.e. add/delete me from a given topic) - it would
>>> > receive a message from a publisher for a given topic, found out who is
>>> > subscribed to it, and duplicated the email message for each consumer
>>> > and send it to them
>>> >
>>> > For the mail server I am thinking about https://www.courier-mta.org/
>>> > and using https://www.courier-mta.org/maildropgdbm.html for
>>> > subscription management.
>>> >
>>> > Basically, this I thought could be a new "email backend" in fedmsg
>>> > instead of zeromq one...
>>> >
>>> > I am not very familiar with email technology but I like the idea
>>> because:
>>> > - if you do an email setup for people, you are going to already be
>>> > technically skilled to do it for services or vice versa
>>> > - one of communicating agents may be a human being that is watching
>>> > what's going on in system by having dedicated inbox folders for each
>>> > type of event (topic) - no amqp/zeromq/mqtt -> email translation is
>>> > needed here - everything is just email (except for irc messages
>>> > emitted based on those)
>>> > - i think this can be optimized to work very reliably inside one
>>> > infrastructure (e.g. debian.org) but at the same time it is easy for
>>> > an outside listener to join in with his/her own service and start
>>> > doing some stuff based on Debian events (if the subscription hub is
>>> > public)
>>> > - it uses the most standard and compatible protocol possible (SMTP) so
>>> > shouldn't be an opinionated technology - theoretical message
>>> > throughput will be limited because of that (i suspect SMTP is not
>>> > extremely fast) but it should be still sufficient to handle all the
>>> > distribution events
>>>
>>> I forgot one large advantage - it is compatible with your way of
>>> operating services by sending emails to them, it is just about making
>>> the interface standardized across applications...
>>>
>>> >
>>> > I am still exploring ideas to do a federated message bus so this is
>>> one of them
>>> > Please, take this as a wild brainstorming, maybe I should have given
>>> > this more time to settle in my head but on the other hand, I won't
>>> > mind being pwned too much here
>>> > clime
>>> >
>>> > >
>>> > > Bye,
>>> > > --
>>> > > Nicolas Dandrimont
>>>
>>

Re: email backend for fedmsg

[Peter Silva]

 there still doesn't seem
>> to be much interest to implement anything beyond email parsing in some of
>> our core systems.
>> >
>> > Cool, so basically what I am thinking about is to create a free
>> > software from what you are describing. I.e. create reusable tooling
>> > out of the Debian messaging system. Something that a new linux
>> > distribution can easily start using to connect their services.
>> >
>> > I didn't know Debian infra works like this but I find it very
>> > elegant/efficient and I would like the solution you have to be
>> > reusable by others.
>> >
>> > So basically the tooling should contain:
>> > - unified email message format
>> > - library that is able to translate a message to a language data
>> > structure (e.g. dictionary in python)
>> > - email receiver that would be listening for emails coming from the
>> > bus and emitting events based on that (this could be part of the
>> > library so you would be able to attach a callback for an incoming
>> > message or just do blocking waits)
>> > - email publisher - something that can send a new message into the
>> > bus, i.e. to a preconfigured mail server (a "broker" or "hub")
>> > - mail server that would have an http API to manage topic
>> > subscriptions  (i.e. add/delete me from a given topic) - it would
>> > receive a message from a publisher for a given topic, found out who is
>> > subscribed to it, and duplicated the email message for each consumer
>> > and send it to them
>> >
>> > For the mail server I am thinking about https://www.courier-mta.org/
>> > and using https://www.courier-mta.org/maildropgdbm.html for
>> > subscription management.
>> >
>> > Basically, this I thought could be a new "email backend" in fedmsg
>> > instead of zeromq one...
>> >
>> > I am not very familiar with email technology but I like the idea
>> because:
>> > - if you do an email setup for people, you are going to already be
>> > technically skilled to do it for services or vice versa
>> > - one of communicating agents may be a human being that is watching
>> > what's going on in system by having dedicated inbox folders for each
>> > type of event (topic) - no amqp/zeromq/mqtt -> email translation is
>> > needed here - everything is just email (except for irc messages
>> > emitted based on those)
>> > - i think this can be optimized to work very reliably inside one
>> > infrastructure (e.g. debian.org) but at the same time it is easy for
>> > an outside listener to join in with his/her own service and start
>> > doing some stuff based on Debian events (if the subscription hub is
>> > public)
>> > - it uses the most standard and compatible protocol possible (SMTP) so
>> > shouldn't be an opinionated technology - theoretical message
>> > throughput will be limited because of that (i suspect SMTP is not
>> > extremely fast) but it should be still sufficient to handle all the
>> > distribution events
>>
>> I forgot one large advantage - it is compatible with your way of
>> operating services by sending emails to them, it is just about making
>> the interface standardized across applications...
>>
>> >
>> > I am still exploring ideas to do a federated message bus so this is one
>> of them
>> > Please, take this as a wild brainstorming, maybe I should have given
>> > this more time to settle in my head but on the other hand, I won't
>> > mind being pwned too much here
>> > clime
>> >
>> > >
>> > > Bye,
>> > > --
>> > > Nicolas Dandrimont
>>
>

Re: email backend for fedmsg

[clime]

at the time kept parsing emails.
>> > > >
>> > > > Hello Nicolas!
>> > > >
>> > > > Do you remember some such service and how it used email parsing
>> specifically?
>> > >
>> > > I believe that tracker.debian.org was introduced around that time.
>> > >
>> > > At the point it was created, tracker.d.o was mostly consuming emails
>> from packages.debian.org to update its data. These days tracker.d.o has
>> replaced packages.d.o as "email router", in that it receives all the mails
>> from services (e.g. the BTS, the archive maintenance software, buildds,
>> salsa webhooks, ...) and forwards them to the public.
>> > >
>> > > > I am still a bit unclear how email parsing is used in Debian
>> > > > infrastructure, don't get me wrong, I find it elegant
>> > >
>> > > Ha. I find that it's a big mess.
>> > >
>> > > Here's the set of headers of a message I received today from
>> tracker.d.o, which are supposed to make parsing these emails better:
>> > >
>> > > X-PTS-Approved: yes
>> > > X-Distro-Tracker-Package: facter
>> > > X-Distro-Tracker-Keyword: derivatives
>> > > X-Remote-Delivered-To: dispa...@tracker.debian.org
>> > > X-Loop: dispa...@tracker.debian.org
>> > > X-Distro-Tracker-Keyword: derivatives
>> > > X-Distro-Tracker-Package: facter
>> > > List-Id: 
>> > > X-Debian: tracker.debian.org
>> > > X-Debian-Package: facter
>> > > X-PTS-Package: facter
>> > > X-PTS-Keyword: derivatives
>> > > Precedence: list
>> > > List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:cont...@tracker.debian.org
>> ?body=unsubscribe%20facter>
>> > >
>> > > I'll leave you to judge whether this makes sense or not.
>> > >
>> > > (and it turns out that the actual useful payload was just plaintext
>> with no real chance of automated parsing)
>> > >
>> > > > but from what I have found (e.g. reportbug), in the beginning there
>> is an
>> > > > email being sent by some human which will then trigger some
>> automatic
>> > > > action (e.g. putting the bug into db). So it's like you could do all
>> > > > your work simply by sending emails (some of them machine-parsable).
>> > > >
>> > > > So do you have the opposite? I do some clicking action somewhere and
>> > > > it will send an email to a certain mailing list to inform human
>> > > > beings? Or let's not just clicking but e.g. `git push` (something
>> that
>> > > > you can still do from command line).
>> > > >
>> > > > Do you have: I do some clicking action somewhere and it will send an
>> > > > email to a certain mailing list where the email is afterward parsed
>> by
>> > > > another service which will do an action (e.g. launch a build) based
>> on
>> > > > it?
>> > >
>> > > Both of these are somewhat true.
>> > >
>> > > Some examples of email-based behaviors:
>> > >  - Our bug tracking system is fully controlled by email.
>> > >  - Closing a bug in reaction to an upload is done by an email from
>> the archive maintenance system (dak) to the bug tracking system.
>> > >  - Salsa has a webhook service that react to UI clicks (e.g.
>> "clicking the merge button") by sending an email to the BTS (e.g. to tag
>> bugs as pending), or to tracker.d.o (for new commit notifications).
>> > >  - Some of our IRC bots are triggered by procmail rules.
>> > >  - At some point mentors.debian.net depended on a NNTP gateway to
>> the debian-devel-changes mailing list to trigger removal of superseded
>> packages (...)
>> > >  - etc. etc.
>> > >
>> > > I'm still not sure where your trail of questions is going? fedmsg in
>> Debian has been dead for years at this point, and there still doesn't seem
>> to be much interest to implement anything beyond email parsing in some of
>> our core systems.
>> >
>> > Cool, so basically what I am thinking about is to create a free
>> > software from what you are describing. I.e. create reusable tooling
>> > out of the Debian messaging system. Something that a new linux
>> > distribution can easily start using to connect their services.
>> >
>> > I didn't know Debian infra works like this but I find it very
>&

Re: email backend for fedmsg

[clime]

: yes
> > > X-Distro-Tracker-Package: facter
> > > X-Distro-Tracker-Keyword: derivatives
> > > X-Remote-Delivered-To: dispa...@tracker.debian.org
> > > X-Loop: dispa...@tracker.debian.org
> > > X-Distro-Tracker-Keyword: derivatives
> > > X-Distro-Tracker-Package: facter
> > > List-Id: 
> > > X-Debian: tracker.debian.org
> > > X-Debian-Package: facter
> > > X-PTS-Package: facter
> > > X-PTS-Keyword: derivatives
> > > Precedence: list
> > > List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:cont...@tracker.debian.org
> ?body=unsubscribe%20facter>
> > >
> > > I'll leave you to judge whether this makes sense or not.
> > >
> > > (and it turns out that the actual useful payload was just plaintext
> with no real chance of automated parsing)
> > >
> > > > but from what I have found (e.g. reportbug), in the beginning there
> is an
> > > > email being sent by some human which will then trigger some automatic
> > > > action (e.g. putting the bug into db). So it's like you could do all
> > > > your work simply by sending emails (some of them machine-parsable).
> > > >
> > > > So do you have the opposite? I do some clicking action somewhere and
> > > > it will send an email to a certain mailing list to inform human
> > > > beings? Or let's not just clicking but e.g. `git push` (something
> that
> > > > you can still do from command line).
> > > >
> > > > Do you have: I do some clicking action somewhere and it will send an
> > > > email to a certain mailing list where the email is afterward parsed
> by
> > > > another service which will do an action (e.g. launch a build) based
> on
> > > > it?
> > >
> > > Both of these are somewhat true.
> > >
> > > Some examples of email-based behaviors:
> > >  - Our bug tracking system is fully controlled by email.
> > >  - Closing a bug in reaction to an upload is done by an email from the
> archive maintenance system (dak) to the bug tracking system.
> > >  - Salsa has a webhook service that react to UI clicks (e.g. "clicking
> the merge button") by sending an email to the BTS (e.g. to tag bugs as
> pending), or to tracker.d.o (for new commit notifications).
> > >  - Some of our IRC bots are triggered by procmail rules.
> > >  - At some point mentors.debian.net depended on a NNTP gateway to the
> debian-devel-changes mailing list to trigger removal of superseded packages
> (...)
> > >  - etc. etc.
> > >
> > > I'm still not sure where your trail of questions is going? fedmsg in
> Debian has been dead for years at this point, and there still doesn't seem
> to be much interest to implement anything beyond email parsing in some of
> our core systems.
> >
> > Cool, so basically what I am thinking about is to create a free
> > software from what you are describing. I.e. create reusable tooling
> > out of the Debian messaging system. Something that a new linux
> > distribution can easily start using to connect their services.
> >
> > I didn't know Debian infra works like this but I find it very
> > elegant/efficient and I would like the solution you have to be
> > reusable by others.
> >
> > So basically the tooling should contain:
> > - unified email message format
> > - library that is able to translate a message to a language data
> > structure (e.g. dictionary in python)
> > - email receiver that would be listening for emails coming from the
> > bus and emitting events based on that (this could be part of the
> > library so you would be able to attach a callback for an incoming
> > message or just do blocking waits)
> > - email publisher - something that can send a new message into the
> > bus, i.e. to a preconfigured mail server (a "broker" or "hub")
> > - mail server that would have an http API to manage topic
> > subscriptions  (i.e. add/delete me from a given topic) - it would
> > receive a message from a publisher for a given topic, found out who is
> > subscribed to it, and duplicated the email message for each consumer
> > and send it to them
> >
> > For the mail server I am thinking about https://www.courier-mta.org/
> > and using https://www.courier-mta.org/maildropgdbm.html for
> > subscription management.
> >
> > Basically, this I thought could be a new "email backend" in fedmsg
> > instead of zeromq one...
> >
> > I am not very familiar with email technology but I like the idea bec

Re: email backend for fedmsg

[clime]

am thinking about is to create a free
> software from what you are describing. I.e. create reusable tooling
> out of the Debian messaging system. Something that a new linux
> distribution can easily start using to connect their services.
>
> I didn't know Debian infra works like this but I find it very
> elegant/efficient and I would like the solution you have to be
> reusable by others.
>
> So basically the tooling should contain:
> - unified email message format
> - library that is able to translate a message to a language data
> structure (e.g. dictionary in python)
> - email receiver that would be listening for emails coming from the
> bus and emitting events based on that (this could be part of the
> library so you would be able to attach a callback for an incoming
> message or just do blocking waits)
> - email publisher - something that can send a new message into the
> bus, i.e. to a preconfigured mail server (a "broker" or "hub")
> - mail server that would have an http API to manage topic
> subscriptions  (i.e. add/delete me from a given topic) - it would
> receive a message from a publisher for a given topic, found out who is
> subscribed to it, and duplicated the email message for each consumer
> and send it to them
>
> For the mail server I am thinking about https://www.courier-mta.org/
> and using https://www.courier-mta.org/maildropgdbm.html for
> subscription management.
>
> Basically, this I thought could be a new "email backend" in fedmsg
> instead of zeromq one...
>
> I am not very familiar with email technology but I like the idea because:
> - if you do an email setup for people, you are going to already be
> technically skilled to do it for services or vice versa
> - one of communicating agents may be a human being that is watching
> what's going on in system by having dedicated inbox folders for each
> type of event (topic) - no amqp/zeromq/mqtt -> email translation is
> needed here - everything is just email (except for irc messages
> emitted based on those)
> - i think this can be optimized to work very reliably inside one
> infrastructure (e.g. debian.org) but at the same time it is easy for
> an outside listener to join in with his/her own service and start
> doing some stuff based on Debian events (if the subscription hub is
> public)
> - it uses the most standard and compatible protocol possible (SMTP) so
> shouldn't be an opinionated technology - theoretical message
> throughput will be limited because of that (i suspect SMTP is not
> extremely fast) but it should be still sufficient to handle all the
> distribution events

I forgot one large advantage - it is compatible with your way of
operating services by sending emails to them, it is just about making
the interface standardized across applications...

>
> I am still exploring ideas to do a federated message bus so this is one of 
> them
> Please, take this as a wild brainstorming, maybe I should have given
> this more time to settle in my head but on the other hand, I won't
> mind being pwned too much here
> clime
>
> >
> > Bye,
> > --
> > Nicolas Dandrimont

Re: email backend for fedmsg

[clime]

onary in python)
- email receiver that would be listening for emails coming from the
bus and emitting events based on that (this could be part of the
library so you would be able to attach a callback for an incoming
message or just do blocking waits)
- email publisher - something that can send a new message into the
bus, i.e. to a preconfigured mail server (a "broker" or "hub")
- mail server that would have an http API to manage topic
subscriptions  (i.e. add/delete me from a given topic) - it would
receive a message from a publisher for a given topic, found out who is
subscribed to it, and duplicated the email message for each consumer
and send it to them

For the mail server I am thinking about https://www.courier-mta.org/
and using https://www.courier-mta.org/maildropgdbm.html for
subscription management.

Basically, this I thought could be a new "email backend" in fedmsg
instead of zeromq one...

I am not very familiar with email technology but I like the idea because:
- if you do an email setup for people, you are going to already be
technically skilled to do it for services or vice versa
- one of communicating agents may be a human being that is watching
what's going on in system by having dedicated inbox folders for each
type of event (topic) - no amqp/zeromq/mqtt -> email translation is
needed here - everything is just email (except for irc messages
emitted based on those)
- i think this can be optimized to work very reliably inside one
infrastructure (e.g. debian.org) but at the same time it is easy for
an outside listener to join in with his/her own service and start
doing some stuff based on Debian events (if the subscription hub is
public)
- it uses the most standard and compatible protocol possible (SMTP) so
shouldn't be an opinionated technology - theoretical message
throughput will be limited because of that (i suspect SMTP is not
extremely fast) but it should be still sufficient to handle all the
distribution events

I am still exploring ideas to do a federated message bus so this is one of them
Please, take this as a wild brainstorming, maybe I should have given
this more time to settle in my head but on the other hand, I won't
mind being pwned too much here
clime

>
> Bye,
> --
> Nicolas Dandrimont

Re: email backend for fedmsg

[Nicolas Dandrimont]

On Tue, Mar 24, 2020, at 21:51, clime wrote:
> On Tue, 24 Mar 2020 at 20:40, Nicolas Dandrimont  wrote:
> >
> > Hi!
> >
> > On Sun, Mar 22, 2020, at 13:06, clime wrote:
> > > Hello!
> > >
> > > Ad. https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2016/07/msg00377.html -
> > > fedmsg usage in Debian.
> > >
> > > There is a note: "it seems that people actually like parsing emails"
> >
> > This was just a way to say that fedmsg never got much of a user base in the 
> > services that run on Debian infra, and that even the new services 
> > introduced at the time kept parsing emails.
> 
> Hello Nicolas!
> 
> Do you remember some such service and how it used email parsing specifically?

I believe that tracker.debian.org was introduced around that time.

At the point it was created, tracker.d.o was mostly consuming emails from 
packages.debian.org to update its data. These days tracker.d.o has replaced 
packages.d.o as "email router", in that it receives all the mails from services 
(e.g. the BTS, the archive maintenance software, buildds, salsa webhooks, ...) 
and forwards them to the public.

> I am still a bit unclear how email parsing is used in Debian
> infrastructure, don't get me wrong, I find it elegant

Ha. I find that it's a big mess.

Here's the set of headers of a message I received today from tracker.d.o, which 
are supposed to make parsing these emails better:

X-PTS-Approved: yes
X-Distro-Tracker-Package: facter
X-Distro-Tracker-Keyword: derivatives
X-Remote-Delivered-To: dispa...@tracker.debian.org
X-Loop: dispa...@tracker.debian.org
X-Distro-Tracker-Keyword: derivatives
X-Distro-Tracker-Package: facter
List-Id: 
X-Debian: tracker.debian.org
X-Debian-Package: facter
X-PTS-Package: facter
X-PTS-Keyword: derivatives
Precedence: list
List-Unsubscribe: 

I'll leave you to judge whether this makes sense or not.

(and it turns out that the actual useful payload was just plaintext with no 
real chance of automated parsing)

> but from what I have found (e.g. reportbug), in the beginning there is an
> email being sent by some human which will then trigger some automatic
> action (e.g. putting the bug into db). So it's like you could do all
> your work simply by sending emails (some of them machine-parsable).
> 
> So do you have the opposite? I do some clicking action somewhere and
> it will send an email to a certain mailing list to inform human
> beings? Or let's not just clicking but e.g. `git push` (something that
> you can still do from command line).
> 
> Do you have: I do some clicking action somewhere and it will send an
> email to a certain mailing list where the email is afterward parsed by
> another service which will do an action (e.g. launch a build) based on
> it?

Both of these are somewhat true.

Some examples of email-based behaviors:
 - Our bug tracking system is fully controlled by email.
 - Closing a bug in reaction to an upload is done by an email from the archive 
maintenance system (dak) to the bug tracking system.
 - Salsa has a webhook service that react to UI clicks (e.g. "clicking the 
merge button") by sending an email to the BTS (e.g. to tag bugs as pending), or 
to tracker.d.o (for new commit notifications).
 - Some of our IRC bots are triggered by procmail rules.
 - At some point mentors.debian.net depended on a NNTP gateway to the 
debian-devel-changes mailing list to trigger removal of superseded packages 
(...)
 - etc. etc.

I'm still not sure where your trail of questions is going? fedmsg in Debian has 
been dead for years at this point, and there still doesn't seem to be much 
interest to implement anything beyond email parsing in some of our core 
systems. 

Bye,
-- 
Nicolas Dandrimont

Re: email backend for fedmsg

[Paul Gevers]

Hi Clime,

On 24-03-2020 21:51, clime wrote:
> So do you have the opposite? I do some clicking action somewhere and
> it will send an email to a certain mailing list to inform human
> beings? Or let's not just clicking but e.g. `git push` (something that
> you can still do from command line).
> 
> Do you have: I do some clicking action somewhere and it will send an
> email to a certain mailing list where the email is afterward parsed by
> another service which will do an action (e.g. launch a build) based on
> it?

git push to most salsa based repos with "Closes: #" in the commit
message will trigger a message to the bts which update the bug meta data
to mark the bug as pending and informs the submitter of that bug that
the bug is about to be fixed.

Paul



signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: email backend for fedmsg

[clime]

On Tue, 24 Mar 2020 at 20:40, Nicolas Dandrimont  wrote:
>
> Hi!
>
> On Sun, Mar 22, 2020, at 13:06, clime wrote:
> > Hello!
> >
> > Ad. https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2016/07/msg00377.html -
> > fedmsg usage in Debian.
> >
> > There is a note: "it seems that people actually like parsing emails"
>
> This was just a way to say that fedmsg never got much of a user base in the 
> services that run on Debian infra, and that even the new services introduced 
> at the time kept parsing emails.

Hello Nicolas!

Do you remember some such service and how it used email parsing specifically?

I am still a bit unclear how email parsing is used in Debian
infrastructure, don't get me wrong, I find it elegant but from what I
have found (e.g. reportbug), in the beginning there is an
email being sent by some human which will then trigger some automatic
action (e.g. putting the bug into db). So it's like you could do all
your work simply by sending emails (some of them machine-parsable).

So do you have the opposite? I do some clicking action somewhere and
it will send an email to a certain mailing list to inform human
beings? Or let's not just clicking but e.g. `git push` (something that
you can still do from command line).

Do you have: I do some clicking action somewhere and it will send an
email to a certain mailing list where the email is afterward parsed by
another service which will do an action (e.g. launch a build) based on
it?

Thanks
clime

>
> > [...]
> >
> > So fedmsg would become a tiny wrapper over email that would just
> > serialize and parse json data to and from email messages and check
> > signatures.
>
> The only native fedmsg producer in Debian was mentors.debian.net. Other 
> events were generated by various email parsers connected to mailing lists 
> (debian-devel-announce, debian-bugs-announce).
>
> > I am asking because I like the idea of distribution-independent
> > infrastructure message bus that this project had.
>
> Yes, it was a nice idea.
>
> > [...]
>
> Cheers,
> --
> Nicolas Dandrimont

Re: email backend for fedmsg

[Nicolas Dandrimont]

Hi!

On Sun, Mar 22, 2020, at 13:06, clime wrote:
> Hello!
> 
> Ad. https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2016/07/msg00377.html -
> fedmsg usage in Debian.
> 
> There is a note: "it seems that people actually like parsing emails"

This was just a way to say that fedmsg never got much of a user base in the 
services that run on Debian infra, and that even the new services introduced at 
the time kept parsing emails.

> [...]
>
> So fedmsg would become a tiny wrapper over email that would just
> serialize and parse json data to and from email messages and check
> signatures.

The only native fedmsg producer in Debian was mentors.debian.net. Other events 
were generated by various email parsers connected to mailing lists 
(debian-devel-announce, debian-bugs-announce).

> I am asking because I like the idea of distribution-independent
> infrastructure message bus that this project had.

Yes, it was a nice idea.

> [...]

Cheers,
-- 
Nicolas Dandrimont

Re: email backend for fedmsg

[Peter Silva]

MQTT is the best thing going for interop purposes.

On Tue, Mar 24, 2020 at 1:20 PM Jeremy Stanley  wrote:

> On 2020-03-24 13:09:35 -0400 (-0400), Peter Silva wrote:
> [...]
> > We could talk about the merits of various protocols (I see fedmsg
> > uses ZeroMQ) but that is a deep rabbit hole... to me, fedmsg looks
> > like it is making a ZeroMQ version of a broker (which is a bit
> > ironic given the original point of that protocol) trying to build
> > a broker ecosystem is hard. Using an existing one is much easier.
> > so to me it makes sense that fedmsg is not really working out.
> [...]
>
> In the OpenDev collaboratory we added an event stream for our
> services some years ago using the MQTT protocol (a long-established
> ISO/OASIS standard). I gather there was some work done to make
> fedmsg support MQTT as a result of that, so it might be an
> alternative to relying on ZeroMQ at least.
> --
> Jeremy Stanley
>

Re: email backend for fedmsg

[Jeremy Stanley]

On 2020-03-24 13:09:35 -0400 (-0400), Peter Silva wrote:
[...]
> We could talk about the merits of various protocols (I see fedmsg
> uses ZeroMQ) but that is a deep rabbit hole... to me, fedmsg looks
> like it is making a ZeroMQ version of a broker (which is a bit
> ironic given the original point of that protocol) trying to build
> a broker ecosystem is hard. Using an existing one is much easier.
> so to me it makes sense that fedmsg is not really working out.
[...]

In the OpenDev collaboratory we added an event stream for our
services some years ago using the MQTT protocol (a long-established
ISO/OASIS standard). I gather there was some work done to make
fedmsg support MQTT as a result of that, so it might be an
alternative to relying on ZeroMQ at least.
-- 
Jeremy Stanley


signature.asc
Description: PGP signature

Re: email backend for fedmsg

[Peter Silva]

hi, totally different take on this...

We could talk about the merits of various protocols (I see fedmsg uses
ZeroMQ) but that is a
deep rabbit hole... to me, fedmsg looks like it is making a ZeroMQ version
of a broker (which is a bit ironic given the original point of that
protocol) trying to build a broker ecosystem is hard. Using an existing one
is much easier.  so to me it makes sense that fedmsg is not really working
out.

However,



I work in telecom for meteorology, and we ended up with a general method
for file copying (catchphrase: rsync on steroids*.) ( *every catchphrase is
a distortion, no dis to rsync, but in certain cases we do work much faster,
it just communicates the idea.) Sarracenia (
https://github.com/MetPX/Sarracenia) is a GPL2 app (Python and C
implementations) that use mozilla public license rabbitmq broker, as well
as openssh and/or any web server to do fastish file synching, and/or
processing/orchestration. The app is just json messages with file metadata
sent through the broker. Then you daisy chain brokers through clients.  No
centralization (every entity installs their own broker), No federated
identity required (authentication is to each broker, but they can pass
files/messages to each other.)

A firstish thing to do with it would be to sync the debian mirrors in
real-time rather than periodically.  Each mirror has a broker, they get
advertisements (AMQP messages containing JSON file metadata) download the
corresponding file, and re-advertise (publish on the local broker with the
local file URL) for downstream clients. You can then make a mesh of
mirrors, where, if each mirror is subscribed to at least two others, then
it can withstand the failure of any node.  If you add more connections, you
increase redundancy.

Once you have that sort of anchor tenant for an AMQP message bus, people
might want to use it to provide other forms of automation, but way quicker
and in some ways much simpler than SMTP.  but yeah... SMTP is a lot more
well-known/common. RabbitMQ is the industry dominant open solution for AMQP
brokers. sounds like marketing bs, but if you look around it is what the
vast majority are using, and there are thousands upon thousands of
deployments. It's a much more viable starting point, for stability, and a
lot less assembly required to get something going. Sarracenia makes it a
bit easier again, but messages are kind of alien and different, so it takes
a while to get used to them.




On Sun, Mar 22, 2020 at 8:24 AM clime  wrote:

> Hello!
>
> Ad. https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2016/07/msg00377.html -
> fedmsg usage in Debian.
>
> There is a note: "it seems that people actually like parsing emails"
>
> What about adding email backend to fedmsg then. Wouldn't it be an
> interesting idea? It could basically rely on postfix for sending
> messages, hence providing decentralization as well as high
> reliability. I think that amount of events that happen in distribution
> (like package update, package build) is never so huge that email
> infrastructure wouldn't handle it and also the machine mailing
> infrastructure could be optionally be separated from the human one if
> needed.
>
> So fedmsg would become a tiny wrapper over email that would just
> serialize and parse json data to and from email messages and check
> signatures.
>
> I am asking because I like the idea of distribution-independent
> infrastructure message bus that this project had.
>
> Btw. instead of json, yaml could be used so it is nicer to human eyes.
>
> clime
>
>

Re: email backend for fedmsg

[clime]

The email backend might be quite a heavy-weight idea ... although I
think it would do the job if properly setup and _very_ reliably. I was
thinking about something similar to google pub/sub.

Another approach how to add reliability to the current fedmsg would be
to add an optional sqlite persistence to each application publishing
the fedmsg messages. Basically, the messages would be stored in a
circular buffer of configurable size so that when some service drops
off, we could still keep messages for it for some time until it
recovers. This is a very rough idea and there is this whole problem
how subscribes should get information about providers and so on...some
analysis is here http://fedmsg.com/federated-message-bus/

I would like to continue the fedmsg project that was mainly started by
Ralph Bean some years ago because I like the idea of a federated
distribution-independent message bus that was triggered by
Debian/Fedora cooperation. There might be some technical challenges on
the way but solvable in the end and the solution might be interesting.

On the other hand, I am only one guy with limited time so if anyone
wants to cooperate on this, it would be most welcome.

clime

email backend for fedmsg

[clime]

Hello!

Ad. https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2016/07/msg00377.html -
fedmsg usage in Debian.

There is a note: "it seems that people actually like parsing emails"

What about adding email backend to fedmsg then. Wouldn't it be an
interesting idea? It could basically rely on postfix for sending
messages, hence providing decentralization as well as high
reliability. I think that amount of events that happen in distribution
(like package update, package build) is never so huge that email
infrastructure wouldn't handle it and also the machine mailing
infrastructure could be optionally be separated from the human one if
needed.

So fedmsg would become a tiny wrapper over email that would just
serialize and parse json data to and from email messages and check
signatures.

I am asking because I like the idea of distribution-independent
infrastructure message bus that this project had.

Btw. instead of json, yaml could be used so it is nicer to human eyes.

clime