Hackermail v1 is released

I started subscribing linux kernel mailing list with my gmail account in 2013. Dealing with the large amount of mails was not that easy, probably due to my poor setup and being lazy at trying more tools.

In 2019, while returning from Linux Plumbers Conference, I read an LWN article saying Linus Torvalds is now considering unsubscribing the linux kernel mailing list, owing to the evolvement of the public-inbox and lore.kernel.org.

lore.kernel.org was so nice but I wanted some more personalized mails management setup, and wanted to avoid the dependency on the web browser and the internet. I hence further looked into the internal of public-inbox a bit. The git-based mails management structure of public-inbox made me believe maybe I could hack my own mail client using it. I hence started the hackermail project. After about a few weeks of the hack, I replaced some parts of my mail workflow with the new tool, namely hkml, and it became much better than before. It looked like there were many more things that I could improve with it, but because it was already enough for my personal workflow, I stopped working on the project for a while. I only fixed some bugs and implemented features as required for myself.

After I started using hackermail, I met a few kernel hackers who reached out to me asking how I manage mails. They were also finding a better way for the kernel mails management. I introduced them hackermail and my workflow. Because it was optimized for only my personal workflow, my answer was not that helpful for them. They gave me many helpful advice, though. I added some TODO items for them but didn’t prioritize and work for those.

A few months ago, I learned that too many gmail accounts subscribing linux kernel mailing list can be a problem. I personally want every discussion to Cc linux-kernel@, but don’t want to make kernel.org have the problem. Hence I unsubscribed the mailing lists and decided to improve hkml to a level that I can migrate all my workflow on it. I also wanted it to be good enough for not only my workflow but also for general. At least the old TODO items should be removed.

So I hacked on it in personal time again. After a few months of such a hack, now I feel I made all the features I wanted to have. The old todo items are now removed. Some of the items were added for not myself but others, but some of those turned out to be very helpful for me, too. Now I think my workflow itself is much more improved.

Due to my tiny source of ideas rather than the quality of the tool, now I show not many TODO items. Hence, I tagged the current version of the tool as v1.0.0. I hope it answers the questions on my mail management workflow, better than those of the past.