Subject: Re: ISSUE 1583 status (was: Re: January: open issues on USEPRO)

From: Julien ÉLIE <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 8 May 2009 12:12:11 +0200

Hi Russ,

>>> 1583 USEPRO LC 5.2.3: Checkgroups control messages
>>>    Open. There may be multiple issues here.
>>>    No discussion with "1583" in the subject.
>
> The first issue is that there's no method in the checkgroups syntax to
> delegate control over a newsgroup whose name matches the subhierarchy.  I
> think we agreed that, yes, this is the case, and there's nothing we can
> really do about it at this stage and while still remaining
> backwards-compatible.

Yet, checkgroups scope is new with USEPRO; it is not mentioned in RFC 1036
or its son.  So what is not backwards-compatible with it?
It is a new notion.  Unless I missed something?

> I'm a little worried about this provision,
> since after long periods of time and a change of hierarchy administration
> it can be potentially difficult to uncover the previous serial number.
> But I don't see a good alternative that preserves the serial number
> semantics.
>
> The fourth issue is whether there should be a mechanism to reset the
> serial number.  I think we decided that we weren't going to specify one.

A possibility would have been to do it in the headers of a new checkgroups
(specifying it resets the previous serial number).  This way, no missed
"reset article".

-- 
Julien ÉLIE

« Boire du café empêche de dormir. Par contre, dormir empêche de boire
  du café. » (Philippe Geluck)

---

From: Russ Allbery <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 08 May 2009 15:28:11 -0700

Julien ÉLIE <[email-masked]> writes:

>> The first issue is that there's no method in the checkgroups syntax
>> to delegate control over a newsgroup whose name matches the
>> subhierarchy.  I think we agreed that, yes, this is the case, and
>> there's nothing we can really do about it at this stage and while
>> still remaining backwards-compatible.
>
> Yet, checkgroups scope is new with USEPRO; it is not mentioned in RFC
> 1036 or its son.  So what is not backwards-compatible with it?  It is
> a new notion.  Unless I missed something?

Existing checkgroups implementations will completely ignore the scope
syntax and process the checkgroups anyway.  The backward compatibility
issue is that we have to be sure that nothing bad happens when they do
that.  I don't remember the exact details, but I think we decided that
was why it was hard to do anything better than what we have here.

-- 
Russ Allbery ([email-masked])             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>

---

From: Julien ÉLIE <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 9 May 2009 09:17:58 +0200

Hi Russ,

> was why it was hard to do anything better than what we have here.

OK, thanks.

It is true that we currently have:
    checkgroups:[email-masked]:cn.bbs.*:verify-cn.bbs.admin.announce
so including "cn.bbs" in this checkgroups will not be honoured.  Only
the checkgroups for "cn.*" can currently act upon "cn.bbs".

-- 
Julien ÉLIE

« Le travail est l'opium du peuple et
  je ne veux pas mourir drogué. » (Boris Vian)