b4 review tui: too smart reply features?

b4 review tui: too smart reply features?

[Matthieu Baerts]

Hi Konstantin,

I'm still trying 'b4 review tui', and something that bothers me is when
my replies are mangled. I have three examples.

- Most of the time, I don't send a reply with only a Reviewed-by tag,
but I add some text, e.g. "Thank you for the new version", "Good
catch!", "Please next time do this", "This should be that, but I will
fix it when applying it", etc. But then, when I look at the "email mode"
view, I don't know where the RvB tag will be added -- in dedicated email
apparently -- and the "trailers" menu doesn't show it checked any more.
Personally, when more text is added, I would prefer to send a single
email with the trailer tags placed where I want.

- When a tag is added in the "reply" view, it is no longer visible when
the "reply" view is re-opened. Also, in the "email mode" view, such tag
is displayed twice.

- Any word followed by a colon is interpreted as a tag and moved
elsewhere, e.g.

    <a long line ending with> you need to Cc
    stable: without that <rest of the line>
    <end>.

  Then in the "email mode" view, I can see:

    <a long line ending with> you need to Cc
    <end>.

    (...)

    stable: without that <rest of the line>

    stable: without that <rest of the line>

    --


Do you think the "reply" view could have an option to insert trailers
tags, and not move what has been added there? It feels simpler: if the
"reply" view is used, the text is not modified, but the code can still
be trimmed. If a tag has been previously added from the "trailers" menu,
it is added at the end of the commit message in the "reply" view, so
people can move it if needed.

Cheers,
Matt
-- 
Sponsored by the NGI0 Core fund.

Re: b4 review tui: too smart reply features?

[Konstantin Ryabitsev]

On Tue, Apr 28, 2026 at 12:52:01PM +0200, Matthieu Baerts wrote:
> Hi Konstantin,
> 
> I'm still trying 'b4 review tui', and something that bothers me is when
> my replies are mangled. I have three examples.

Okay, the latest master has revamped that quite a bit. I was also not really
happy with the way I kept fighting with the tooling, which is the opposite of
where I want to go. I had the bright idea to move some of the functionality
into a vim plugin instead of doing it in b4 directly -- this way you still get
most of the neat features but without the inability to undo or forced/awkward
quote trimming.

Can you try it out and see if you're fighting with the current master less?

Thanks for riding the sharp edge! :)

-K

Re: b4 review tui: too smart reply features?

[Matthieu Baerts]

Hi Konstantin,

On 11/06/2026 03:56, Konstantin Ryabitsev wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 28, 2026 at 12:52:01PM +0200, Matthieu Baerts wrote:
>> Hi Konstantin,
>>
>> I'm still trying 'b4 review tui', and something that bothers me is when
>> my replies are mangled. I have three examples.
> 
> Okay, the latest master has revamped that quite a bit. I was also not really
> happy with the way I kept fighting with the tooling, which is the opposite of
> where I want to go. I had the bright idea to move some of the functionality
> into a vim plugin instead of doing it in b4 directly -- this way you still get
> most of the neat features but without the inability to undo or forced/awkward
> quote trimming.
> 
> Can you try it out and see if you're fighting with the current master less?

Thank you for the update, and sorry for the delay!

I just retried, and it is indeed much better now! Yet, I still have an
issue with trailers, e.g.

  Please add a Fixes tag. Here I guess it should be:

  Fixes: (...)

The Review view then correctly showed my comment with the Fixes tag, but
*I think* the Fixes tag was not visible in green at the bottom left (not
sure, because I also added a Reviewed-by tag after the reply). When
looking at the 'email mode' view, the Fixes tag got dropped, leaving 2
empty lines around.

Back to the 'reply' view, vim showed all lines ending with ^M, and the
line starting with 'Fixes:' was no longer there. Adding it back re-added
it to the other views, and the Fixes tag was also listed at the bottom
left in the 'review' view, but I could see extra new lines due to all
these \r. Stripping them from the 'reply' view fixes all the issues, and
I was able to send the reply with both my Fixes and Reviewed-by tags.

Any idea was caused that? :)

BTW, after having sent a reply, it appears a few seconds later as unread
in my inbox. I guess only a filter on the inbox side can help to mark
them as read, right?

Cheers,
Matt
-- 
Sponsored by the NGI0 Core fund.

Re: b4 review tui: too smart reply features?

[Konstantin Ryabitsev]

On Tue, Jun 30, 2026 at 12:55:25PM +0200, Matthieu Baerts wrote:
> I just retried, and it is indeed much better now! Yet, I still have an
> issue with trailers, e.g.
> 
>   Please add a Fixes tag. Here I guess it should be:
> 
>   Fixes: (...)
> 
> The Review view then correctly showed my comment with the Fixes tag, but
> *I think* the Fixes tag was not visible in green at the bottom left (not
> sure, because I also added a Reviewed-by tag after the reply). When
> looking at the 'email mode' view, the Fixes tag got dropped, leaving 2
> empty lines around.

This turned out to be two separate bugs, thanks for the detailed description!

There's an attempted fix in the current master: the trailer menu now only ever
touches its own trailer types (Acked-by, Reviewed-by, Tested-by, NACKed-by).
Anything else you type into the reply -- Fixes:, Cc:, Suggested-by:, whatever
-- is treated as your content and is never moved or removed.

Removing a trailer via the menu should also no longer leave a doubled blank
line behind.

> Back to the 'reply' view, vim showed all lines ending with ^M, and the line
> starting with 'Fixes:' was no longer there. Adding it back re-added it to
> the other views, and the Fixes tag was also listed at the bottom left in the
> 'review' view, but I could see extra new lines due to all these \r.
> Stripping them from the 'reply' view fixes all the issues, and I was able to
> send the reply with both my Fixes and Reviewed-by tags.
> 
> Any idea was caused that? :)

That was bug number two, also with a fix on mater: b4 now normalizes
line endings on every editor round-trip, whatever your editor decides to
write, and previously stored buffers get cleaned up the next time they're
touched.

Try them out!

> BTW, after having sent a reply, it appears a few seconds later as unread in
> my inbox. I guess only a filter on the inbox side can help to mark them as
> read, right?

This annoys me, too, so I'll think of a way to handle this.

Thanks again,
-K

Re: b4 review tui: too smart reply features?

[Mark Brown]

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On Wed, Jul 29, 2026 at 12:38:16AM -0400, Konstantin Ryabitsev wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 30, 2026 at 12:55:25PM +0200, Matthieu Baerts wrote:

> > BTW, after having sent a reply, it appears a few seconds later as unread in
> > my inbox. I guess only a filter on the inbox side can help to mark them as
> > read, right?

> This annoys me, too, so I'll think of a way to handle this.

It could just mark all mail sent by the user as read automatically,
that'd also handle the case where they reply separately.

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