{"thread":{"id":"17781","subject":"[RFC] git-send-email: making --no-chain-reply-to the default","startedAt":"2009-02-14T00:29:11Z","lastAt":"2009-02-14T00:29:11Z","messageCount":1,"participants":["Junio C Hamano"],"isPatch":false,"patchVersion":null,"patchTotal":null},"messages":[{"id":"104558","messageId":"7veiy16eug.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org","threadId":"17781","inReplyTo":null,"subject":"[RFC] git-send-email: making --no-chain-reply-to the default","fromName":"Junio C Hamano","fromEmail":"gitster@pobox.com","sentAt":"2009-02-14T00:29:11Z","receivedAt":"2009-02-14T00:29:11Z","isPatch":false,"sender":{"key":"gitster@pobox.com","avatar":"https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/54884?v=4"},"body":"There was a short complaint-fest on the kernel mailing list about the\ndefault behaviour of send-email being \"chain-reply-to\".\n\nAs I am moving the discussion to where it should belong, here is a\nsummary of what was said so far.\n\nWhen there are more than two patches in a series, we often see three\ndifferent styles (explanation taken from Lennart Sorensen's message):\n\n  Split: (multiple seperate threads)\n  foobar patch 1\n  +-comment on patch 1\n  foobar patch 2\n  foobar patch 3\n  +-comment on patch 3\n  foobar patch 4\n  foobar patch 5\n\n  Shallow: (all patches as response to a cover letter)\n  foobar patch 0 (usually a summary/overview)\n  +-foobar patch 1\n  | +-comment on patch 1\n  +-foobar patch 2\n  +-foobar patch 3\n  | +-comment on patch 3\n  +-foobar patch 4\n  +-foobar patch 5\n\n  Deep: (One long chain of messages)\n  foobar patch 0\n  +-foobar patch 1\n    +-foobar patch 2\n    | +-foobar patch 3\n    |   +-foobar patch 4\n    |   | +-foobar patch 5\n    |   +-comment on patch 3\n    +-comment on patch 1\n\nLennart reports that from early January to early Feburary on the Linux\nkernel mailing list, there were 25 split sets, 56 shallow sets and 6 deep\nsets.\n\nI counted 30 shallow sets and 50 deep sets in a recent git mailing list\nmessages (I counted this by only looking at 3/N patch among 5200\nmessages).\n\nThe numbers themselves may show what the senders consider appropriate to\nsubmit, but they do not talk about the reader preference, which matters\nmore.  The messages should be sent in a form that is easier to read.\n\nGiven that many patches on the Kernel list do not even originate from git,\nas opposed to here a lot more are coming from git-send-email, I interpret\nthe differences of these numbers to mean that people prefer shallow style\nwhen they have a choice, but many just use git-send-email with its default\nconfiguration and end up producing Deep style threads.\n\nI personally agree with a short list of people who expressed their opinion\nthere that it is a bad default as it produces the \"Deep\" kind illustrated\nbelow that is hard to follow, and would like to propose to change the\ndefault not to chain-reply-to in a future release (but not in 1.6.2, it is\ntoo late for that).\n\nBut the people complained were only a tiny fraction of the Linux kernel\nmailing list readership, and these days git is not a property of the\nkernel community alone anymore.  People tend to speak out loud only when\nthey do not like the status quo, so I'd like to give people who do not\nwant the default to change a chance to voice their opinions.\n\nYes, I said \"opinions\" and that means I am not taking a poll of individual\npreferences and \"+1\" and \"mee too\" are unwelcome noise.  Making convincing\narguments such as \"Among $N major communities that use git as the primary\nSCM, $M projects spell their patch submission policy to use Deep style,\nwhich is a majority; please teach members of the minority projects to how\nto configure git-send-email to match their style instead and do not change\nthe default.\" is good, if you can make one.\n\nUnless we hear convincing arguments *why* the default should *not* change,\nI'll announce that it will change in 1.6.3 in the release notes to 1.6.2.\n\nThanks.\n"}]}