Include issue number of favoured issue in notification email when another issue is closed as a duplicate of it

[gregsskyles]

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I follow the activity of several repos via Watch - All Activity and so receive an email when anything happens. A niggling issue is that when an issue is closed as a duplicate, the email does not say which issue it is a duplicate of. Leaving the email interface and opening the website reveals that GitHub 'knows' what issue is considered primary, the email just doesn't include this information.

An example from the mesonbild/meson repo:

Text in notification email: "Closed #8213 as duplicate."

Opening the issue in a web browser shows this same event as: "dcbaker closed this as a duplicate of C++20 modules are in: discussing a sane (experimental) design for Meson #5024"

Why can't the email be: "Closed #8213 as duplicate of #5024." ?

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[benogoulart]

I agree this would be a small but meaningful usability improvement.

When following repositories by email, it's much more convenient to know which issue was chosen as the primary one without having to open GitHub. Including the canonical issue number (and ideally its title) in the notification would provide the same context that's already available on the web interface while reducing unnecessary clicks.

This seems like a straightforward improvement to the email notifications.

[mohammadrezwankhan]

The web page already has the missing context, and the public API exposes it too, so this looks like an email-rendering gap rather than missing issue data.

For the Meson example, the timeline for #8213 contains a cross-referenced event whose source.issue is #5024, including its title and HTML URL. The issue response also records the duplicate state. GitHub documents this endpoint in REST API endpoints for timeline events.

A practical workaround is to follow the issue link from the email and query that timeline when you need the canonical target; clients should paginate the timeline because the event may be older than the first page. The product change could then be small and unambiguous: render the existing “Closed #8213 as duplicate” line as “Closed #8213 as duplicate of #5024 — C++20 modules are in…”, linking both issues. That preserves the current notification while putting the same source.issue.number, title, and URL already shown on the web directly into the email.