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

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Apr 6, 2012, 20:22 UTC
Message-ID: <7vbon41ugg.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <CAMP44s1b=HfhPNkmiEjPnQpupd0FPBNgVyp5Sw=zFVTdqmJXEg@mail.gmail.com>

Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com> writes:

Show 16 quoted lines

> On Fri, Apr 6, 2012 at 8:14 PM, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
>> Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>> 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).

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.

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