Re: [RFC PATCH] format-patch: thread as reply to cover letter even with in-reply-to

From: Jay Soffian <jaysoffian@gmail.com>
Date: Feb 16, 2009, 20:22 UTC
Message-ID: <76718490902161222p7f1ecbf9x6f965ff94b3cfae7@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <1234810812-30499-1-git-send-email-trast@student.ethz.ch>

On Mon, Feb 16, 2009 at 2:00 PM, Thomas Rast <trast@student.ethz.ch> wrote:

Show 8 quoted lines

> Currently, format-patch --thread --cover-letter --in-reply-to $parent
> makes all mails, including the cover letter, a reply to $parent.
> However, we would want the reader to consider the cover letter above
> all the patches.
>
> This changes the semantics so that only the cover letter is a reply to
> $parent, while all the patches are formatted as replies to the cover
> letter.

I think this change may be okay, but I think to go with it the cover-letter and all the patches should have a "References:" header with the message-id given by --in-reply-to.

RFC 2822 says:

   The "In-Reply-To:" and "References:" fields are used when creating a
   reply to a message.  They hold the message identifier of the original
   message and the message identifiers of other messages (for example,
   in the case of a reply to a message which was itself a reply).  The
   "In-Reply-To:" field may be used to identify the message (or
   messages) to which the new message is a reply, while the
   "References:" field may be used to identify a "thread" of
   conversation.

j.