Re: [PATCH RESEND] send-email: add 'specify-author' option

On Fri, Apr 6, 2012 at 11:22 PM, Junio C Hamano [off-list ref] wrote:

Felipe Contreras [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

On Fri, Apr 6, 2012 at 8:14 PM, Junio C Hamano [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

Felipe Contreras [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

Some mail servers (Microsoft Exchange) mangle the 'From' header, so
while applying the patches, the author has to be fixed manually.

...
I wouldn't say that the existing option names to send-email are great, but
I have to say that the one added by this is simply horrible ;-)

The first paragraph of the proposed commit log message states the problem
it tries to address very clearly, which is good, but is "From: " the only
thing that needs this?  I am wondering if this should be named and behave
more like "--duplicate-header" or "--in-body-header".

I have never seen any other 'in-body-header' other than From, and I
don't see how that would be useful. Anybody else?

The "Subject:" is very often used in the wild, when responding to an
existing discussion thread with a patch, without changing the topic of the
thread (I would say it is used more than "From: " override).

Hmm, but that is different, isn't it?

AFAIK people use this format:

---
$headers

Message

Patch (format-patch output: headers, commit message, diff)
---

In this case 'git am' would ignore the patch headers. The only way
'git am' would override $headers, is if the first part of the body has
new headers:

---
$headers

$patch_headers

$patch_commit_message

$patch_diff
---

IOW; if there's no message at the beginning of the body.

When using send-email to start a thread anew, this use case is much less
of a problem, but I wouldn't be surprised if a broken MSA/MTA mangled the
subject (especially imagine a non-ASCII ones) incorrectly which would be
helped with exactly the same in-body-header mechanism.

I can't foresee that, but I guess we can do it anyway. So which would
be the fields to repeat? From, Date, and Subject?

You probably meant "I do not want to hear from Junio" by your last
half-sentence, but I replied anyway ;-).

I meant I wanted to know which fields would be useful to put in the body.

Cheers.

-- 
Felipe Contreras