I use Gmail. I like the way it manages conversations, with one exception. New bugs reported in Bugzilla cause an email with a title like “New: Fix the bug” to be sent. All subsequent changes to that bug cause an email with a title like “Fix the bug” to be sent. So that first email doesn’t get included in the same conversation as the rest of the emails because the subject line has the “New: ” at the start.
This is annoying. Does anyone know how to fix it, either on the Gmail side or the Bugzilla side?
7 replies on “Gmail and Bugzilla”
If you have google for domains you could put a smtp relay before the gmail servers which rewrites the subject line.
I filed a bug on this with bugzilla (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=650575). It was not terribly well received. They said, correctly, that it was gmail at fault, since gmail doesn’t respect the threading header which says what things are in reply to.
However, I can’t really fault gmail, since the whole mail threading situation is completely fucked up and has been for decades. Gmails heuristic of using the subject is the most sensible out of any mail app I’ve ever used.
To me, it comes down to this: adding “New: ” in front of the subject is very low value, and ruins bugmail for all gmail users (I’m told this is 17% of the mozilla users, using the metric of who has an actual @gmail.com account listed, which is probably a lowball).
Read all about it at https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=650575. I’d love to see this fixed.
I think this is because Gmail looks mainly at the subject line for threading and doesn’t follow the mail headers which show that the mail for the same bug should be threaded.
Unfortunately I don’t have a solution other than wait for Gmail to follow the mail headers or have the bugzilla installation not prepend “New: “
Use Thunderbird, would fix that, use it with the gmail conversation extension would give you what you’d want.
I hate that too.
As someone who changes subject lines I actually want threading to break when the subject line breaks (most of the time).
This is one case where I don’t want that.
You know how I know a bug is new? I haven’t seen it before. This is an irritating feature, and perhaps it should be optional.
Dave: http://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/2011/06/10/gmail-and-bugzilla-an-update/ 🙂
@Paul Biggar: Not all gmail users, only all gmail *webmail* users. People who, like me, read their Gmail inbox by POP3 (or presumably IMAP4) with a decent mail client (such as Thunderbird, SeaMonkey, or presumably Opera Mail, perhaps even Outlook Express) see all the following threaded together:
[Bug 654321] New: Error “gogglywhoop.fazoodle.frump is undefined” at chrome://mozapps/content/gogglywhoop/gogglywhoop.xul line 325
[Bug 654321] Error “gogglywhoop.fazoodle.frump is undefined” at chrome://mozapps/content/gogglywhoop/gogglywhoop.xul line 325
(and even after an edit of the Summary):
[Bug 654321] The fazoodle should frumpify the gogglywhoop
review canceled: [Bug 654321] The fazoodle should frumpify the gogglywhoop
review granted: [Bug 654321] The fazoodle should frumpify the gogglywhoop
etc.