[darcs-users] Log messages by e-mail

[Jason Dagit]

On 7/20/06, Nathaniel Gray <n8gray at caltech.edu> wrote:
> I'm trying to set up a central-ish repository and I'd like to have it
> send a message to a mailing list for each apply, containing info about
> each patch applied.  I tried setting
>
> apply posthook send-log-message
> apply run-posthook
>
> in the _darcs/prefs/defaults file but that sends a message once per
> *apply*, without giving any info about how many patches were applied!
> Is there some trick that can make this work sensibly or do I have to
> resort to some kind of horrific send-log-message that tries to compute
> what's changed by itself?

You're right. It's designed to send one email per apply not per patch.
 You have basically three options here 1) write the horrific script
yourself 2) extend darcs 3) wait for someone else to do #1 or #2.  I
would prefer to see #2 happen but it's unclear to me what the
interface should be like and I doubt I'll have time to do it in the
near future.  Do you have some ideas on how you'd like the interface
to work?  Would passing the number of patches in via an environment
variable be useful to you?

You're not the first person to ask for this so perhaps you could find
someone else to help with this?  I will say that I've used it to send
out emails per apply and it's worked out great.  I really didn't need
one email per patch.  I just included the output of darcs changes with
the email and then people had what they needed; notification of update
plus a 'change log' of sorts.  You can also use the xsl file from
darcs-cgi (with minor modifications) combined with the xml output of
darcs changes to get an rss feed.  If that interests you can I help
you piece it together.

Wish I had a more positive answer...

Jason