Re: [PATCH 2/2] format-patch: --inline-single

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Feb 22, 2013, 16:47 UTC
Message-ID: <7vmwuws3bo.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <20130221231328.GA19808@sigill.intra.peff.net>

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

Show 10 quoted lines

>> ... <helper function to see if the user is the author> ...
>> +}
>
> Nice, I'm glad you handled this case properly. I've wondered if we
> should have an option to do a similar test when writing out the "real"
> message format. I.e., to put the extra "From" line in the body of the
> message when !is_current_user(). Traditionally we have just said "that
> is the responsibility of the MUA you use", and let send-email handle it.
> But it means people who do not use send-email have to reimplement the
> feature themselves.

I am not sure if I follow. Do you mean that you have to remove fewer lines if you omit Date/From when it is from you in the first place? People who do not use send-email (like me) slurp the output 0001-have-gostak-distim-doshes.patch into their MUA editor, tell the MUA to use the contents on the Subject: line as the subject, and remove what is redundant, including the Subject. Because the output cannot be used as-is anyway, I do not think it is such a big deal.

And those who have a custom mechanism to stuff our output in their MUA's outbox, similar to what imap-send does, would already have to have a trivial parser to read the first part of our output up to the first blank line (i.e. parsing out the header part) and formatting the information it finds into a form that is understood by their MUA. Omitting From: or Date: lines would not help those people who already have established the procedure to handle the "Oh, this one is from me" case, or to send the output always with the Sender: and keeping the From: intact. So,...