Re: [PATCH RFC 1/6] Re: send-email: Add --delay for separating emails

On Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 12:27, Michael Witten [off-list ref] wrote:

On Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 11:17, Nicolas Sebrecht
[off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

The --delay option may have an undesirable side effect. In case of
non-chained emails, unrelated mails could be insterted between patches
where *all* MUA would be affected. It's not only true for very high
volume message mailing-lists (million monkeys receiving...). FMPOV, it's
worse than all display issues we already know or have with the current
behaviour.

But it's already impossible to protect against this scenario. In that
situation, the smallest delay possible is desired, so --delay wouldn't
even be used (that is, its value would be zero). However, the transit
delay could never be small enough to guarantee that no other emails
are inserted into the patch series, so the only solution is to chain
them. At this point, we're back to the problem of arrival time, and
hence --delay becomes useful.

I do agree that --delay could exacerbate the spreading out of patches.